The Secret of Secrets, Vol 1
Talks on the Secret of the Golden Flower
Talks given from 11/08/78 am to 26/08/78 am
English Discourse series
16 Chapters
Year published:
The Secret of Secrets, Vol 1
Chapter #1
Chapter title: Animus and Anima
11 August 1978 am in Buddha Hall
Archive code:
7808110
ShortTitle:
SOS101
Audio: Yes
Video:
No
Length: 114 mins
MASTER LU-TSU SAID: THAT WHICH EXISTS THROUGH ITSELF IS
CALLED THE WAY (TAO) TAO HAS NEITHER NAME NOR SHAPE. IT IS THE
ONE ESSENCE THE ONE PRIMAL SPIRIT. ESSENCE AND LIFE CANNOT BE
SEEN. THEY ARE CONTAINED IN THE LIGHT OF HEAVEN. THE LIGHT OF
HEAVEN CANNOT BE SEEN. IT IS CONTAINED IN THE TWO EYES.
THE GREAT ONE IS THE TERM GIVEN TO THAT WHICH HAS NOTHING
ABOVE IT. THE SECRET OF THE MAGIC OF LIFE CONSISTS IN USING
ACTION IN ORDER TO ATTAIN NON-ACTION.
THE GOLDEN FLOWER IS THE LIGHT. ONE USES THE GOLDEN FLOWER
AS A SYMBOL. THE PHRASE 'THE LEAD OF THE WATER-REGION HAS BUT
ONE TASTE' REFERS TO IT.
THE WORK ON THE CIRCULATION OF THE LIGHT DEPENDS ENTIRELY ON
THE BACKWARD-FLOWING MOVEMENT SO THAT THE THOUGHTS ARE
GATHERED TOGETHER. THE HEAVENLY HEART LIES BETWEEN SUN AND
MOON.
THE BOOK OF THE YELLOW CASTLE SAYS: 'IN THE SQUARE INCH FIELD
OF THE SQUARE FOOT HOUSE LIFE CAN BE REGULATED.' IN THE MIDDLE
OF THE SQUARE INCH DWELLS THE SPLENDOUR. IN THE PURPLE HALL
OF THE CITY OF JADE DWELLS THE GOD OF UTMOST EMPTINESS AND
LIFE.
THEREFORE WHEN THE LIGHT CIRCULATES, THE ENERGIES OF THE
WHOLE BODY APPEAR BEFORE ITS THRONE, AS, WHEN A HOLY KING
HAS ESTABLISHED THE CAPITAL AND HAS LAID DOWN THE
FUNDAMENTAL RULES OF ORDER, ALL THE STATES APPROACH WITH
TRIBUTE; OR AS, WHEN THE MASTER IS QUIET AND CALM,
MEN-SERVANTS AND MAIDS OBEY HIS ORDERS OF THEIR OWN ACCORD,
AND EACH DOES HIS WORK.
THEREFORE YOU ONLY HAVE TO MAKE THE LIGHT CIRCULATE: THAT IS
THE DEEPEST AND MOST WONDERFUL SECRET. THE LIGHT IS EASY TO
MOVE, BUT DIFFICULT TO FIX. IF IT IS MADE TO CIRCULATE LONG
ENOUGH, THEN IT CRYSTALLIZES ITSELF. IT IS THE CONDITION OF
WHICH IT IS SAID: 'SILENTLY THOU FLIEST UPWARD IN THE MORNING.'
IN CARRYING OUT THIS FUNDAMENTAL PRINCIPLE YOU NEED TO SEEK
FOR NO OTHER METHODS, BUT MUST ONLY CONCENTRATE YOUR
THOUGHTS ON IT. BY COLLECTING THE THOUGHTS ONE CAN FLY AND
WILL BE BORN IN HEAVEN.
THE GOLD FLOWER IS THE ELIXIR OF LIFE. ALTHOUGH IT WORKS VERY
ACCURATELY, IT IS YET SO FLUID THAT IT NEEDS EXTREME
INTELLIGENCE AND CLARITY, AND THE MOST COMPLETE ABSORPTION
AND TRANQUILITY. PEOPLE WITHOUT THIS HIGHEST DEGREE OF
INTELLIGENCE AND UNDERSTANDING DO NOT FIND THE WAY; PEOPLE
WITHOUT THIS UTMOST CAPACITY FOR ABSORPTION AND TRANQUILITY
CANNOT KEEP FAST HOLD OF IT.
A parable...
Once there was a very rich magician who had a great many sheep. But at the same
time this magician was very mean. He did not want to hire shepherds, nor did he want
to erect a fence about the pasture where his sheep were grazing. The sheep
consequently often wandered into the forest, fell into ravines, and so on, and above all
they ran away, for they knew that the magician wanted their flesh and skins and this
they did not like.
At last the magician found a remedy. He HYPNOTIZEd his sheep and suggested to
them first of all that they were immortal and that no harm was being done to them
when they were skinned, that, on the contrary, it would be very good for them and
even pleasant; secondly, he suggested that the magician was a GOOD MASTER who
loved his flock so much that he was ready to do anything in the world for them; and in
the third place, he suggested to them that if anything at all were going to happen to
them it was not going to happen just then, at any rate not that day, and therefore they
had no need to think about it. Further, the magician suggested to his sheep that they
were not sheep at all; to some of them he suggested that they were lions, to others that
they were eagles, to others that they were men, and to others that they were
magicians.
And after this all his cares and worries about the sheep came to an end. They never
ran away again but quietly awaited the time when the magician would require their
flesh and their skins.
George Gurdjieff loved this parable very much. His whole philosophy is contained in
this small parable. And this parable represents man in the ordinary state of
unconsciousness. It is one of the most beautiful illustrations of man as he is.
Man is a machine. Man is not born to be a machine, but man lives like a machine and
dies like a machine. Man has the seed of a great flowering of consciousness, man has
the possibility to become God, but that doesn't happen. It does not happen because
man has been hypnotized -- by the society, by the state, by the organized church, by
the vested interests. The society needs slaves and man can remain a slave only if he is
not allowed to grow to his uttermost flowering. The society needs your flesh and your
skins and naturally, nobody likes it. Hence, the whole process of socialization, of
civilization, is nothing but a deep hypnosis.
Man is being hypnotized from the very moment he is born. He is being hypnotized to
believe that the society exists in his favour, for his good. That is utterly wrong. He is
being hypnotized to believe that he is immortal. He is not. He can be, but he is not.
And if the hypnosis persists he will never be immortal.
You live only as a mortal being, because you live in the body. The body is going to die.
That which is born is bound to die. Birth is the beginning of the body and death the
end. Do you know anything in you which is more than the body? Have you
experienced anything higher than the body, deeper than the body? Have you seen
anything in you which was even before you were born? If you have seen that, then
you are immortal. If you know your face, your original face, the face that you had
before you were born, then you know you will be there after death too; otherwise not.
Man can be an immortal, but man lives surrounded by death because man lives
identified with the body. The society does not allow you to know more than the body.
The society is interested only in your body -- your body can be put to use -- your soul
is dangerous.
A man of soul is always dangerous because a man of soul is a free man. He cannot be
reduced to slavery. A man who has an immortal soul in him has a deeper commitment
to existence itself, to God himself. He does not care a bit about the man-made
structures of society, civilization and culture; these are prison cells for him. He does
not exist as a Christian or a Hindu or a Mohammedan. He cannot be part of a crowd.
He exists as an individual.
The body is part of a crowd, your soul is not. Your soul is deeply individual. Its
flavour is that of freedom.
But your soul cannot be put to any use in the market-place. The society needs only
your body. And it is very dangerous for the society if you start striving for the soul,
because then your interest changes. You turn from being all extrovert into an introvert;
you start moving inwards. The society is outside, the society wants you to remain an
extrovert, interested in money, power, prestige, and all that, so that your energy goes
on moving outwards. If you start moving inwards, that means you have become a
drop-out, you are no more part of the game that is being played on the outside. You
don't belong to it. You start diving deep within your own being. And there is the
source of immortality.
The society prevents you from going inwards. And the best way is to give you a false
idea that you are going inwards.
The magician told the sheep that they were lions, suggested to them that they were
immortals, hypnotized them into believing that they were not only men but great
magicians.
When you go to a church you are not going inwards. When you go to the temple you
are not going inwards. But the society has hypnotized you to believe that 'If you w ant
to go inwards, go to the church.' But the church is as much outside as anything else.
The society has hypnotized you to believe that 'If you want to go inwards, go to the
priest.' And the priest is an agent of the state and the society. The priest has always
been against the mystics, because if you go to a mystic you will start moving inwards.
A mystic lives in a totally different way. His energy moves in a different gestalt: his
river moves inwards. So one who comes to a mystic, falls in tune with the mystic, will
start moving inwards naturally, simply, spontaneously. That is the whole purpose of
being with a Master, with a mystic.
This book, THE SECRET OF THE GOLDEN FLOWER, IS one of the most esoteric
treatises in the world. It will show you the way to become more than the body. It will
show you the way to go beyond death. It will show you the way to bloom -- how not
to remain a seed but to become a Golden Flower. What in India we have called the
one-thousand-petalled lotus, in China they call the Golden Flower. It is a symbol.
The flower represents perfection, totality. The flower represents the uttermost
expression of the potential, the actualization of the potential. The flower represents
the beauty, the grandeur, the splendour of being. And unless you have become a
thousand-petalled lotus or a Golden Flower...
Remember you have to go far. Remember that you have to get out of the traps that the
society has put around you. Remember that you have not yet done the work for which
you have come to the earth. Remember you are just a seed, not yet a soul.
This treatise, THE SECRET OF THE GOLDEN FLOWER, is very ancient -- possibly
one of the most ancient treatises in the world certainly twenty-five centuries old, and
the possibility is that it is older than that. But twenty-five centuries can be traced hack
very easily. And this treatise is also a great synthesis of all the great religions. That is
rare, unique. The Bible belongs to the Christians, the Talmud belongs to the Jews, the
Vedas belong to the Hindus, the Dhammapada to the Buddhists, the Tao Te Ching to
the Taoists. But this small book, THE SECRET OF THE GOLDEN FLOWER,
belongs to no one in particular, or, it belong to all.
It is deeply based in Taoist teachings. It is a flowering of the Taoist approach to life
and existence. But it is not only that -- Zarathustra has played a role. Zarathustra's
teachings have been incorporated in it Buddhist teachings have also been incorporated
in it. And a certain esoteric school of Christians, the Nestorians, they have also played
their part. So Christianity and Judaism also have become part of it.
It is one of the most synthetical approaches. It combines all that is beautiful in all the
traditions of the world. For centuries it was only transmitted orally, and the book
remained esoteric. It was not available to the public because it has something very
secret to teach; it was available only to the disciples. The Master would tell to the
disciple only when the time was ripe, because it gives you such a potential secret that
if you don't understand rightly, if you do something wrong with it, there are found to
be harmful effects from it. It has to be understood rightly, and it has to be worked at
only in the presence of a Master. It is a powerful method it is as powerful as atomic
energy.
Now, the secrets of atomic energy are kept hidden from the public. Once they start
leaking out to the public there is going to be great danger. If people can manufacture
atom bombs privately, there is bound to be great chaos. Great secrecy is maintained
about atomic research. Exactly in the same way this book teaches you one of the most
potential methods of inner explosion. For centuries the secrets were guarded -- only
given to the disciples in privacy, in intimacy. And the people who followed this
particular esoteric school resisted all temptations to write the book. In fact, all the
religions of the world have long resisted writing their spiritual teachings.
There is some beauty when something is transferred really. It is alive -- one thing -the Master is behind it. it is not a dead word, the word has soul, wings. The
experience of the Master supports it; the master is a witness to it. It is not just
speculation, not only a philosophy, but something existential, experienced, lived. And
the Master has travelled the path; he knows the dangers of the path, he knows the
pitfalls, he knows the points at which people go astray, and he will take every care so
that the disciple cannot go astray.
The closer you come to the truth, the more is the possibility of going astray, because
when you come closer to the truth, you can become very egoistic: that 'Now I know,'
that 'Now I am.' And if the ego exploits the situation you will fall back to your old
dark valley, you will lose the peak. When you come closer to the truth, a great desire
arises to share it with people. But you have not attained it in its wholeness; and it is
dangerous to share half-truths because half-truths are more dangerous than lies,
because they are powerful. Lies are impotent. Sooner or later people will themselves
find that it is a lie. But the half-truth can persist for centuries, can have effects for
centuries.
Nobody can reach through the half-truth, and the person who travels half the way will
belong neither to this world nor to the other. He will be in a limbo, and that is a very
strange situation to be in: you lose the old and you don't gain the new; you become a
chaos. The old order is gone and the new has not happened. You become a cloud, you
become confusion. Rather than becoming more clear, rather than becoming more alive,
rather than becoming more light-full, your life becomes a conflict between two
polarities. You are pulled apart, you start falling into pieces. Half of you belongs to
the earth and half of you belongs to the sky. Now you are nowhere. Now you are
nobody. This can create madness. So, for centuries THE SECRET OF THE GOLDEN
FLOWER was only conveyed orally.
Secondly, with an oral tradition the book remains always alive. That's how it became a
synthesis. Basically it was born in the Taoist climate of China. But then Bodhidharma
reached China -- a new master with a new message from India, Buddha's message.
And the people who were following THE SECRET OF THE GOLDEN FLOWER
were very open people; they were not part of any established church. They could
immediately see that Bodhidharma also had it -- it was so apparent, so manifest. They
allowed Bodhidharma's teachings to be part of their teaching. And the same happened
with Zoroastrian Masters, with Nestorian Christians. Again and again something came
to China, and if it was worthwhile, it was incorporated.
An oral teaching remains alive, growing, like a river. New streams of water come and
become part of it. Once a teaching is written, then it cannot incorporate anything
anymore. Then it becomes rigid, it loses fluidity, it becomes dead; it is a corpse. Now
THE SECRET OF THE GOLDEN FLOWER is not growing. For centuries it has not
grown. Since it has been written it has not grown.
Why have I chosen to speak on it? -- so that it can still grow. It is such a beautiful
message to the world, it should not die. I would like to revive it. And now I can talk to
people who are disciples, who have come to me and who are ready to die in order to
be reborn, who are ready to die for flowering. The seed has to die, only then can it
grow. The seed has to disappear, only then can the tree happen.
I will be speaking to you on this small but immensely valuable book so that the book
can become alive again. It can become alive between me and you. It can again start
flowing. And it has something of immense importance. If you understand it and if you
practise it, you will be enriched.
But the first thing to understand is: remember that you have been hypnotized, and you
have to go through a dehypnotizing process. Remember that you have been
conditioned and you have to be unconditioned. Remember that death is coming. Don't
think that it is not going to happen today; it can happen any moment.
In fact, all that happens always happens now. The seed dies now, the bud becomes the
flower now, the bird starts calling now. All that ever happens happens only in the
space made available by NOW, this moment. Nothing ever happens in the past, and
nothing ever happens in the future. All that happens always happens in the present -that is the only way for things to happen because the present is the only time there is.
Past is just your memory and future is just your imagination. But you have been
hypnotized to live in the past, and you have been hypnotized to live in the future.
Choose either past or future, but no society allows you to live in the present.
Christians and Hindus and Mohammedans -- they condition you to live in the past.
Their golden age was in the past. Communists, socialists, fascists -- they condition
you to live in the future, their golden age is in the future, the utopia is coming: 'When
the revolution comes, then you will be able to really live, then there will be a golden
age.'
Either you are taken to the past, which is false, or to the future, which is again false.
No society tells you to live in the present, in the herenow. To be a sannyasin, to be a
real seeker means to live herenow. And there is no other life. But for that you will
have to de-automatize yourself, you will have to become a man and not a machine.
You will have to become a little more conscious. You are not conscious.
Once I was sitting by the side of a dying man -- he was a professor in the same
university where I was a professor. He was at the pinnacle of his successful career.
And then came the heart attack -- which always comes when you are at the pinnacle.
Success is always followed by a heart attack. What else can you have after it? So he
had a heart attack and he was dying. I went to see him. He was very sad -- who wants
to die? -- and he was in great despair and anguish. I told him, 'You need not worry.
You're not going to die.'
He said, 'What are you saying? But the doctors... all the doctors say that there is no
possibility of my survival. On what grounds are you saying that I am not going to
die?'
I said, 'You cannot die in the first place, because you never lived. You have not
fulfilled the first requirement for dying. For these fifty-five years you have been
sleep-walking, you have dreamt; you have not lived. I have watched you for years.'
He was shocked, he was angry -- so angry that for a moment he forgot all about death.
His eyes were aflame with anger and he said, 'Is this the way to treat a dying man?
Can't you be a little courteous? Why are you so hard on me? I am dying and you are
talking such great philosophy -- "You never lived." Is this the time to say such things?'
I listened silently. I just became absolutely silent. Then the rage disappeared and he
started crying, and great tears came to his eyes. He held my hand with great love, and
then he said, 'Maybe you are right. I never lived. Maybe you are not rude, you are just
being true. And I know nobody else would have said this to me.' And then, great
gratitude, and for a moment he became so conscious that one could have seen the light
on the face -- it was there, he was all aura. And he thanked me. That night he died. I
remained with him to the last moment.
And he said, 'If you had not been here I would have missed my death too, as I have
missed my life. But I am dying consciously. At least one thing I am happy about -- I
am not dying unconsciously. '
And his death was beautiful. He died without any regret, he died in a relaxed way. He
died almost with a welcoming heart, he died full of gratitude. He died prayerfully. His
next life is bound to have a different quality. If death is so beautiful it brings a new
life to you.
But one has to live each moment, whether it is of life, of love, of anger, of death.
Whatsoever it is one has to live each moment as consciously as possible.
A peasant, carried away by his imagination, found himself in a vegetable garden
stealing cucumbers.
'I'll carry off this sack of cucumbers,' he thought, 'and with the money I get for them
I'll buy a hen. The hen will lay eggs, she will sit on them and hatch a brood of chicks,
and I'll feed the chicks till they grow, then I'll sell them and buy a suckling pig. I'll
feed the suckling pig till it grows into a sow, I'll breed her, and she'll have a litter of
pigs and I'll sell them. With the money I get for the pigs I'll buy a house with a garden;
I'll plant cucumbers in the garden, and I won't let anyone steal them -- I'll keep guard
over them. I'll hire a strong watchman, and from time to time I'll go out to the garden
and shout, "Hey, you! Take care!" '
The peasant was so carried away by this thought that he shouted at the top of his voice.
The watchman heard him and came running. He caught the peasant and gave him a
good thrashing.
But this is how man lives: in dreams, in imagination, in projections. This is how you
live. And this is not the way to live this beautiful, tremendously valuable life! This is
sheer wastage! You have to become more attentive to the moment, to the present. You
have to gather your consciousness. Consciousness is your treasure, and all the
methods that have been invented, devised, down the centuries are nothing but ways to
create more consciousness in you, to create more fire in you, to make your life a
passionate affair, a flame. People are living dull lives, people are living
absent-mindedly, people are living inattentively. How can you live with so much
inattention around you? Inattention is darkness, attention is light. And this treatise will
teach you how to create more light in you, so that one day... the Golden Flower.
Two psychiatrists met on the street. 'You are feeling fine,' said one. 'How am I doing?'
People are asking each other. Nobody knows how they are doing, they are looking
into each other's eyes, gathering information about themselves from others. That's
why the opinion of others has become so important. If somebody says you are a fool,
you become angry. Why? Or you become sad. Why? You are shattered. You were
thinking you are a wise man, because others had told you that you are wise. It was the
opinion of others that you depended on. Now somebody else says you are a fool. He
can easily shatter your wisdom, very easily. He has thrown a stone and you had made
a palace with playing cards. Now all is shattered. That's why one becomes so angry,
so enraged, so violent, and one becomes so worried, anxious. You are continuously
looking for what others are thinking, because you know only that which others think
about you, you don't know anything about yourself. Now what kind of situation is this?
If I cannot know about myself, who else can know about me? From the outside
nobody can watch me, I am not available that way. From the outside only my body
can be watched. From the inside I can know my consciousness.
Even when you stand before a mirror you see only your body, you cannot see your
consciousness in the mirror. Even you cannot see it in the mirror -- your own
consciousness. You have to see it directly. It is never mirrored, it is never reflected in
anything; it is invisible. You have to close your eyes and be it. And that is the only
way of knowing it.
But people live so unconsciously. They simply live by the opinion of others. What
others say becomes their soul. Others can take it away any moment. People remain
beggars.
Have you known anything about yourself directly? Have you ever encountered
yourself directly without bringing the opinion of others into it? If you have not done it,
you have not yet lived. Life starts only by encountering oneself, by seeing oneself
directly, immediately. Life exists only when you are capable of seeing yourself as you
are, not as others think about you. What can they think about you? What can they say
about you? They can watch your behaviour, they cannot watch you. If you want to
watch yourself, only you can do that, nobody else. It cannot be done by servants. It
cannot be delegated to somebody else. It cannot be done by the experts either. But we
are so much interested in others' opinions because we are absolutely absent -- there is
nobody awake inside. Deeply asleep, we are snoring inside.
The absent-minded professor went in for a haircut. He sat down in the barber's chair,
but didn't remove his hat.
'I'm afraid you will have to take off your hat,' said the barber. 'Oh, I'm sorry!' said the
professor, 'I didn't know there were ladies present.'
Watch your own absent-mindedness. Watching it will create attentiveness in you.
Watch what is happening within you: thoughts passing, memories arising, a cloud of
anger, a dark night of sadness, or a beautiful morning of joy. Watch all that passes in
you. Become more and more watchful. Slowly slowly you will become an integrated
watchfulness. And the method taught by THE SECRET OF THE GOLDEN
FLOWER is how to become integrated in your inner light.
This is the story of this book before we enter into the sutras.
The book comes from an esoteric circle in China. The founder of this esoteric circle is
said to have been the well-known Taoist adept, Lu Yen. Where did Lu Yen get this
secret teaching? He himself attributes it to Master Kuan Yiu-hsi, for whom,
accord-ing to tradition, Lao Tzu wrote down his TAO TE CHING.
Lao Tzu never wrote a single word in his whole life. He declined again and again the
invitation to write anything. He conveyed to his disciples what he had come to know,
but he was not ready to write, because he said, 'The Tao which can be said is not the
true Tao.' The Tao which can be expressed is already falsified. It can be learned only
in intimate contact with the Master. There is no other way of communicating it. It can
only be learned in a deep communion where the disciple and the Master meet, where
the disciple holds nothing back, where the disciple and the Master overlap, where
their consciousnesses merge into each other. Only in such a meeting, communion, can
Tao be conveyed. So he refused again and again.
He lived a long life. But when he was going to die he left China on a water buffalo.
Why on a water buffalo? His whole teach-ing had been the teaching of the
watercourse way. He said: One should be like water -- flowing, fluid, fresh, always
moving towards the ocean. And one should be like water -- soft, femi-nine, receptive,
loving, non-violent. One should not be like a rock. The rock appears to be very strong
but is not, and water appears to be very weak but is not.
Never be deceived by appearances. Finally the water wins over the rock and the rock
is destroyed and becomes sand and is taken to the sea. The rock disappears finally -against the soft water.
The rock is masculine; it is the male mind, the aggressive mind. Water is feminine,
soft, loving, not aggressive at all. But the non-aggressive wins. The water is always
ready to surrender, but through surrender it conquers -- that is the way of the woman.
The woman always surrenders and conquers through it. And the man wants to conquer
and the ultimate result is just a surrender and nothing else. Hence, he chose a water
buffalo when he left the country.
Where was he going? He was going to the Himalayas to die into that eternal beauty.
A real man knows how to live and how to die. A real man lives totally, dies totally. A
real man lives in benediction and dies in benediction.
He was going into absolute aloneness in the Himalayas. But he was caught on the
border. And the man who caught him on the border was Master Kuan Yiu-hsi. He was
a guard at the last post of the Chinese border. Lao Tzu had to pass that post; there was
no other way to get out of the country. And Kuan Yiu-hsi persuaded him: 'You are
going to die, you are leaving the country forever, and soon you will be leaving the
body. Please write just a few words. And I won't allow you to get out of the land if
you don't write them. This price you have to pay.'
And Lao Tzu had to sit in Kuan Yiu-hsi's hut for three days, and there he wrote the
TAO TE CHING.
The tradition of THE SECRET OF THE GOLDEN FLOWER IS said to have
originated with Lu Yen. Lu Yen himself attributes it to Master Kuan Yiu-hsi for whom,
according to tradition, Lao Tzu wrote down his TAO TE CHING. Kuan means 'the
Han-ku pass', hence he is called Master Kuan, that is 'Master of the Han-ku pass.' And
he must have been a great adept, otherwise it would have been impossible to persuade
Lao Tzu to write. His whole life he had declined -- he could not decline the invitation
of this man. This man must have had something that it was impos-sible even for Lao
Tzu to say no to.
This is how the tradition of THE GOLDEN FLOWER IS connected with Lao Tzu.
But it didn't start with Lao Tzu. Lao Tzu himself says that whatsoever he is saying has
been said before, again and again, down the centuries. He is not bringing a new truth
in the world but only a new expression. It is always so. Truth is the same, only
expressions differ. What Lao Tzu said is the same as what Krishna had said before
him. What Krishna said is the same as what Buddha said later on. What Buddha has
said is the same as Mohammed, as Jesus, as Zarathustra have said although their
expressions are so different that you will need great intel-ligence to see to the very
core. The structure is different, the language is different, their ways of saying it are
different; naturally, because they are different persons, different indi-viduals, with
their own uniqueness. But truth is neither new nor old; and wherever truth is, it is
eternal.
The book, THE SECRET OF THE GOLDEN FLOWER, is one of the eternal sources
where one can again become alive, one can again find the door to the divine.
The sutras:
Master Lu-tsu said: THAT WHICH EXISTS THROUGH ITSELF IS CALLED THE
WAY (TAO).
The word 'Tao' essentially means 'the Way'. Nothing can be said about the goal. The
goal remains elusive, inexpressible, ineffable. But something can be said about the
Way. Hence, Taoists have never used the word 'God', 'truth', NIRVANA, no; they
simply use the word 'Way'. Buddha says, 'Buddhas can only show you the Way. If you
follow the path, you will reach to the truth.' Truth will have to be your own experience.
Nobody can define the truth, but the Way can be defined; the Way can be made clear.
The Master cannot give you the truth, but the Master can give you the Way. And once
the Way is there then all that is needed is to walk on it. That has to be done by the
disciple.
I cannot walk for you, and I cannot eat for you. I cannot live for you, and I cannot die
for you. These things have to be done by oneself. But I can show the Way, I have
walked on the Way.
Tao simply means 'the Way'.
THAT WHICH EXISTS THROUGH ITSELF IS CALLED THE WAY.
And the definition is beautiful.
Lu-tsu says, 'That which exists by itself, that which needs nobody else's support, that
which has always existed whether you walk on it or not...' Whether anybody walks on
it or not does not matter, it always exists. In fact, the whole existence follows it
unknowingly. If you can follow it knowingly your life will become a great blessing. If
you follow it unknowingly, then you will go on stumbling, then you cannot enjoy it as
it should be enjoyed.
A man can be brought into the garden, and he may be unconscious. He4 may be drunk
or he may be in a coma or under the impact of chloroform. He can be brought into the
garden. He is unconscious. The songs of the birds will be heard by his ears, but he
will not know. And the fragrance of the flowers will come riding on the breeze to his
nostrils, but he will not know. And the sun will shine on him and will shower light on
him, but he will not know. And the breeze will caress him, but he will not know. And
you can put him under the shade of a big tree and the coolness of it, but he will not
know. That's how man is.
We ARE in Tao, because where else can we be? To live is to be on the Way. To live is
to live in God. To breathe is to breathe in God. Where else can we be? But just as the
fish lives in the ocean and is completely oblivious of the ocean, we are living in Tao
and are completely oblivious of Tao. In fact, it is so obvious, that's why we are so
oblivious. The fish knows the ocean so well... the fish is born in it, the fish has never
been out of it, the fish takes it for granted, hence the fish is not aware of it. We are on
the Way, we are in God, we live in Tao, through Tao, but we are not aware of it. The
Tao exists, because without the Tao trees will not grow, and stars will not move, and
th- blood will not circulate, and the breath will not come in. Life will disappear.
Life is possible only if there is a fundamental law holding it. Life is possible only if
there is something that supports it. Look at the immense order in existence. It is not a
chaos, it is a cosmos. What makes it a cosmos? Why is there so much harmony? There
must be a law that keeps the harmony going, flowing, keeps everything in accord. But
we don't know about it. We don't know. anything about our own being, and we are
joined through our being with Tao.
TAO HAS NEITHER NAME NOR SHAPE. IT IS THE ONE ESSENCE, THE ONE
PRIMAL SPIRIT.
It is the ocean of life that surrounds us. It is within and with-out -- the pure essence. It
is existence, it is the primal spirit. No name can contain it. All names are its name, and
no shape is particular to it because all shapes are Tao's shape. Tao exists in millions of
forms. In the tree it is green, in the flower it is red. In man it is man, in fish it is fish. It
is the same law. You can replace the word 'Tao' with 'God' and it will be the same.
What Christians and Mohammedans call God, Taoists call Tao, Buddhists call it
Dharma, Jews used to call it Logos, but they mean the same thing. No name can
contain it, or, it can be expressed by any name.
ESSENCE AND LIFE CANNOT BE SEEN. THEY ARE CONTAINED IN THE
LIGHT OF HEAVEN. THE LIGHT OF HEAVEN CANNOT BE SEEN. IT IS
CONTAINED IN THE TWO EYES.
You can see the form, you can see the body -- the body is the form, the substance that
surrounds the essence -- but you cannot see the essence. The essence is invisible to the
eyes, unapproach-able by the senses. It has to be felt immediately, not through any
media.
You see my body, I see your body -- it is through a medium. My eyes are telling me
you are here. Your eyes are telling you that I am here. But who knows? the eyes may
be deceiving -- they do deceive sometimes. In the night, in the dark, you see a rope as
if it were a snake. And when you see it as a snake it affects you as a snake. You are
afraid, you start running. Or you can see in the desert an oasis which is not there,
which is only a projected phenomenon because you are so thirsty that you want it to
be there, so you create it there. Eyes deceive many times. So who knows?
If truth is known through a medium then it will always remain suspect, doubtful; it
can't have any certainty -- absolute certainty it can't have. And a truth which is not
absolutely certain is not truth at all. The truth has to be absolutely certain; it cannot be
approximately certain. Then there is only one way: it should be known without a
medium. One should know it directly, immediately. One should know it without any
senses. And that's how it is known.
You cannot see life, but you can feel it. It is a subjective experience, not an object.
ESSENCE AND LIFE CANNOT BE SEEN. THEY ARE CONTAINED IN THE
LIGHT OF HEAVEN. THE LIGHT OF HEAVEN CANNOT BE SEEN. IT IS
CONTAINED IN THE TWO EYES.
You have these two eyes. These two eyes for the Taoist are very significant. Only
modern science has been able to see the truth of it. These two eyes are not only the
visible eyes. These two eyes represent the male and the female in you. Now modern
science says that the brain of man is divided into two hemispheres, and one
hemisphere is male, the other is female. The right side of your mind is feminine, and
the left side is masculine. So your one eye represents the male in you, and your other
eye represents the female in you. And when your male and female meet inside you,
that meeting is what is called 'heaven' -- that meeting, that inner communion of your
male and female.
Jesus says, 'When your two eyes become one there will be light.' He is talking like a
Taoist alchemist. When your two eyes become one, there will be light. When your two
eyes become one -- when your male and female disappear into each other -- that is the
ultimate orgasmic experience. What you feel making love to a woman or to a man is
only a glimpse of it, a very fleeting glimpse. It is so momentary that by the time you
become aware of it, it is already gone. You become aware of it only in the past, it is so
fleeting. But it is a glimpse, a glimpse of the meeting of the man and the woman.
This is an exterior meeting. It is a miracle that it happens even for a single moment,
but there is a deep possibility. And that has been the work of Tantra, Tao, Yoga, and all
the great secret teachings of the world: to help you become aware of your feminine
and your masculine inside -- what TANTRIKAS call Shiva and Shakti, and what
Taoists call 'yin' and 'yang'. The polarity, the positive and negative in you, the day and
night in you -- they have to meet there.
THE LIGHT OF HEAVEN CANNOT BE SEEN. IT IS CONTAINED IN THE TWO
EYES.
But unless they become one you will not become aware of it. IT IS CONTAINED IN
THE TWO EYES. But you cannot see it unless they become one, then it is released.
Then there is a great explosion of light. Zarathustra calls it 'explosion of fire'. Lao Tzu
calls it 'explosion of light'. It is the same.
You must have come across the statement of John the Baptist. He used to say to his
disciples, 'I baptize you with water. After me shall come one who will baptize you
with fire.' That's what he meant when he said, 'After me there will come one who will
baptize you with fire.'
The baptism of water is an outer baptism. To John the Baptist water represents the
outward flow. Remember this: that the outward and the downward are synonymous,
and the upward and the inward are synonymous. Whatsoever goes downward also
goes outward, and whatsoever goes upward also goes inward, and vice versa. Water
always goes downward, hence it represents an outward flow. It goes away from itself.
Its journey is an exterior journey. Fire goes upward, always upward. And upward is
synonymous with the inward. Its journey is always interior.
John the Baptist is saying: I am baptizing you with water, I am giving you the outer
body of the religion. After me will come Christ who will give you the inner baptism,
the baptism Of fire.
Jesus himself again and again says, 'Repent. Repent ye.' And the word has fallen into
a wrong interpretation with the Christians. They have made it 'repentance for
misdeeds'. It has nothing to do with misdeeds. The word 'repent' actually means:
return, go in, go back. It means: turn back... restore your-originality. The word 'repent'
means metanoia, turning back -- a one-hundred-and-eighty-degree turn. If you go on
flowing outwards you remain water. If you turn in you become fire.
And when the two eyes, when these two flames, when these two hemispheres of your
consciousness join together, are absolutely bridged and you become one flame, that
one flame is what Plotinus calls 'the flight of the alone to the alone'.
THE GREAT ONE IS THE TERM GIVEN TO THAT WHICH HAS NOTHING
ABOVE IT.
And if you can become that One, you have become the great One. This is the Taoist
way of saying something about God without using the word 'God'. If you become one,
you have become God.
THE SECRET OF THE MAGIC OF LIFE CONSISTS IN USING ACTION IN
ORDER TO ATTAIN NON-ACTION.
These are potential words What is the secret of making these two eyes one? How to
make the male and the female one in you? How to let your woman and man dissolve
into each other so that you are no more a duality, so that you are no more a house
divided against itself, so that there is no longer any conflict and tension, so that all is
one? In that oneness is bliss because all tension disappears, all conflict disappears, all
anxiety disappears. How to become that One?
THE SECRET OF THE MAGIC OF LIFE CONSISTS IN USING ACTION IN
ORDER TO ATTAIN NON-ACTION.
Man represents action, woman represents non-action. You have to use action to attain
non-action. You have to make effort to become effortless. You have to go and put in
all your energies, you have to become so active that nothing is left behind. All energy
becomes involved into that creativity, and then, suddenly, when all energy is involved,
there happens a transformation. Just as at a hundred degrees water evaporates, action,
when it becomes total, evaporates, and non-action is left behind.
First you have to learn how to dance, and you have to put all your energies into
dancing. And one day that strange experience happens when suddenly the dancer
disappears in the dance, and the dance happens without any effort. Then it is inaction.
first you have to learn action to go into inaction. That's what meditation is all about.
People come and ask me why I teach active meditations -- because that is the only
way to find inaction. Dance to the uttermost, dance in a frenzy, dance madly, and if
your whole energy is involved in it, a moment comes when suddenly you see the
dance is happening on its own -- there is no effort in it. It is action without action.
THE GOLDEN FLOWER IS THE LIGHT. ONE USES THE GOLDEN FLOWER
AS A SYMBOL. THE PHRASE 'THE LEAD OF THE WATER-REGION HAS BUT
ONE TASTE' REFERS TO IT.
The Golden Flower is a symbol, the symbol of when your energies are no more dual
and have become one. Great light is released, and the light is golden: it is as if a
flower of golden light has opened in you. And it is not just a symbol -- it is a symbol
but it is almost literally true. It happens exactly like that. Right now you exist as a
darkness, as a dark night. Then you exist as a sunrise. You cannot see the sun
anywhere but the light is there. There is no source to it -- it is a sourceless light. But
once you have known that golden light in you, you have become an immortal. Then
there is no death because the light never dies.
The whole of life, the whole existence consists of nothing but light. All are forms of
light. You can ask modern physics too, and modern physics is in perfect agreement
with Tao that all is light; forms go on changing, but the light continues. Light is
eternal.
Many scriptures of the world begin with the word 'light'. 'In the beginning... God said,
Let there be light...' That is the beginning. If there was ever a beginning, it could not
have been otherwise, it had to have been with light. But there has never been a
beginning. This is just a parable. Light has existed always.
The Koran says God is light. One of the names of God given by the Sufis is NUR.
NUR means light.
And the taste is the same -- whether it happens in me or it happens in you the taste is
the same. The taste of Buddhahood is the same. Buddha has said, 'The taste of
Buddhahood is like the ocean. You can taste it from the north or from the south, or
from this part or from that part, from the shore or from the middle, but the taste of the
ocean is the same. So is the taste of Buddhahood.'
The moment a person attains to this eternal light, his life has a single flavour. That
flavour is contained by absolute awareness. His unconscious has disappeared. There is
no longer any dark part in his being.
Now if a Freudian looks into such a man, he will find only consciousness, ONLY
consciousness; he will not find the unconscious. If a Freudian looks in you, only one
part is conscious. Against this one part there are nine parts which are unconscious -only one-tenth of your mind is conscious. A Buddha is one hundred percent
consciousness.
THE WORK ON THE CIRCULATION OF THE LIGHT DEPENDS ENTIRELY ON
THE BACKWARD-FLOWING MOVEMENT, SO THAT THE THOUGHTS ARE
GATHERED TOGETHER. THE HEAVENLY HEART LIES BETWEEN SUN AND
MOON.
Again remember, the sun represents the male energy, the moon represents the
feminine energy. And the heart lies between the two. The heart is neither male nor
female. And that is the beauty of the heart: the heart is divine, neither male nor female.
And it lies exactly between the two.
If you are leaning too much towards the male energy you are too active and you don't
know how to be passive. That's what has happened in the West. The West is
sun-oriented -- too much activity. People are driving themselves mad with their
activity. Too much speed -- everything has to be done immediately, no patience -- no
waiting. They have forgotten how to be passive, how to be patient, how to wait for
things. They have lost all capacity to be inactive. They don't know how to go on a
holiday. Even if they go on a holiday they are more active than ever. More people
have heart attacks on Sunday in the West than on any other day, because it is a holiday.
And people are too occupied. The whole working week they think they will rest when
the holiday comes, and when the holiday comes, they have a thousand and one things
to do. Not that they have to do them, that they are needed, no, not at all; but they
cannot live in rest. They cannot just lie down on the lawn and be with the earth. They
cannot just sit silently under a tree and do no-thing. No, they will start doing a
thousand and one things around the house. They will fix this and unfix that, they will
open their car engines and start doing things to it. They will do something. But they
will remain active.
Their whole life people think that when they are retired then they will enjoy. But they
cannot enjoy, they cannot rest. People die very fast once they become retired.
Psychologists say they die ten years earlier because they don't know what else to do.
Death seems the only way to get rid of a life which has become meaningless, which
has always been meaningless, which has been just a rush. People are rushing not
knowing where they are going. All that they know is they have to go fast and faster
and faster without ever being worried 'Where exactly are you going? You may be
running in a circle.' That is exactly what is happening: people are running in a circle.
The West is sun-oriented. The East is moon-oriented.
The East has become too passive, too fatalistic: 'Nothing has to be done. Simply wait,
God will do it.' This is another kind of foolishness and stupidity. The East is poor, lazy,
lousy, and people are not worried by anything. The misery all around, the poverty, the
beggars, the illness -- nobody is worried. Everything is accepted. 'What can you do? It
is God's will. We have to accept. We have just to wait. When things get too much,
God will come. What else can we do?' This is the feminine mind.
THE SECRET OF THE GOLDEN FLOWER says you have to be exactly in the
middle, neither male nor female, no leaning to any extreme. Then there is balance.
Then one is active and yet remains inactive deep inside. Then one is inactive and yet
remains active on the outside. On the outside be sun-oriented, on the inside be
moon-oriented. Let sun and moon meet in you, and you be just exactly in the middle.
And in the middle is transcendence.
THE WORK ON THE CIRCULATION OF THE LIGHT DEPENDS ENTIRELY ON
THE BACKWARD-FLOWING MOVEMENT, SO THAT THE THOUGHTS ARE
GATHERED TOGETHER.
Man is a centre and also a circumference. If you move towards the circumference,
then you will have many thoughts. The circumference consists of the many. The
centre is one. If you move towards the centre, thoughts start disappearing. At the very
core all thoughts disappear; there is only awareness. That's what this secret treatise
says:... SO THAT THE THOUGHTS ARE GATHERED TOGETHER.
The light has to move inwards.
When you look at a tree your eyes are throwing their light on the tree -- the light is
moving outward. When you close your eyes, the light starts turning inward -METANOIA, repent, return. And when the light falls on your own being, there is
self-knowledge, self-knowing. And that self-knowing brings you freedom -- freedom
from all entanglements, freedom from all attachments, freedom from death, freedom
from body. It creates the soul in you.
That's what Gurdjieff used to say to his disciples: that you are not born with a soul,
you have to create it by METANOIA.
THE BOOK OF THE YELLOW CASTLE SAYS: 'IN THE SQUARE INCH FIELD
OF THE SQUARE FOOT HOUSE, LIFE CAN BE REGULATED.'
In this small temple of your body life can be regulated.
IN THE MIDDLE OF THE SQUARE INCH DWELLS THE SPLENDOUR. IN THE
PURPLE HALL OF THE CITY OF JADE DWELLS THE GOD OF UTMOST
EMPTINESS AND LIFE.
Just see the contradiction: emptiness and life. Life is male, emptiness is female. Life
and emptiness -- both are two aspects of the inner God. When you have not chosen
either in pre-ference to the other, when you have not chosen at all -- you have been
just a watcher -- you become that God whose one aspect is life and whose other aspect
is death, whose one aspect is perfection and whose other aspect is nothingness.
THEREFORE WHEN THE LIGHT CIRCULATES, THE ENERGIES OF THE
WHOLE BODY APPEAR BEFORE ITS THRONE...
And when the light moves inwards and circulates inside your being, because there is
no outlet left.... That's what meditation is. That's what Buddha is doing under the
Bodhi Tree.
You sit silently, you close all the doors, and the light circulates within. Then for the
first time you become aware of the body and all that the body contains -- all its
mysteries. This small body contains all the mysteries of the universe. It is a miniature
cosmos.
THEREFORE WHEN THE LIGHT CIRCULATES, THE ENERGIES OF THE
WHOLE BODY APPEAR BEFORE ITS THRONE, AS, WHEN A HOLY KING
HAS ESTABLISHED THE CAPITAL AND HAS LAID DOWN THE
FUNDAMENTAL RULES OF ORDER, ALL THE STATES APPROACH WITH
TRIBUTE; OR AS, WHEN THE MASTER IS QUIET AND CALM,
MEN-SERVANTS AND MAIDS OBEY HIS ORDERS OF THEIR OWN ACCORD,
AND EACH DOES HIS WORK.
And when this light is there moving inside you, the body becomes a servant. The
senses become obedient servants. You need not try to control them -- they follow you
of their own accord.
This is the beauty of Tao: it never enforces anything, it does not want to cultivate any
character. It says: Simply become full of light and all else will follow.
THEREFORE YOU ONLY HAVE TO MAKE THE LIGHT CIRCULATE: THAT IS
THE DEEPEST AND MOST WONDERFUL SECRET. THE LIGHT IS EASY TO
MOVE, BUT DIFFICULT TO FIX. IF IT IS MADE TO CIRCULATE LONG
ENOUGH, THEN IT CRYSTALLIZES ITSELF. IT IS THE CONDITION OF
WHICH IT IS SAID: 'SILENTLY THOU FLIEST UPWARD IN THE MORNING.'
A very significant thing is being said in this sutra: The light is easy to move, it is
difficult to fix it. So don't try to fix it. That's where Yoga tries to do something which
cannot be done easily. Hence, the difficulty, the arduousness of Yoga -- Yoga tries to
fix the light. It also tries to fix the light between the two eyes -- just exactly between
the two eyebrows at the third-eye centre. Yoga tries to fix it. That is the difference
between Tao and Yoga: Yoga wants to fix it. 'Concentrate on the third eye' -- in a
nutshell, that is the whole philosophy of Yoga. 'If you can concentrate your whole
consciousness on the third eye you will be transformed, your two eyes will become
one and you will be full of light.'
And just beyond the third eye -- the third eye is the sixth centre in the Yoga map of
consciousness -- beyond the sixth is the seventh. The seventh is called 'the
one-thousand-petalled lotus'. If the light is concentrated at the third eye, when it
becomes too much, it will give a push to the seventh centre. It will start rising like
water in a reservoir. And the push to the seventh centre will open the bud that has
remained a bud for centuries, for millions of lives.
Tao works from a different standpoint. Tao says: To fix the light is very difficult.
Don't become concerned with fixing it. The easy way is to circulate it. Mind always
finds circulation easy. It is mind's nature to move. Mind always finds it difficult to
concentrate, so why not use mind's capacity? Why not ride on it?
Tao is a spontaneous science. Don't cultivate, don't force, don't create unnecessary
troubles for yourself. Use the natural capacity of the mind: that it moves, that it likes
movement, that it is a wanderer. Use it. Let light circulate -- we will come to know
how to circulate it later on -- find paths, and let it circulate.
Through its circulation Taoists came to discover the seven hundred points of
acupuncture. Circulating it all over the body, they became aware that there are seven
hundred points where light becomes very very aflame. And they counted them exactly.
Now science corroborates it: there are exactly seven hundred points. Now even
machines have been invented which can just picture your seven hundred points and
where the light is missing in your points, where the energy is not moving in the right
meridians. How did the Taoists come to know about it? They had no machines, no
technology. Their only technique was to go in and circulate the light.
We will come to know about the actual method -- how to circulate it. This is just to
make a background so you understand what exactly their approach is.
They say if you circulate the light and go on circulating it, at a certain point it
crystallizes on its own. You need not worry about fixing it. Circulating, circulating,
circulating, one moment, suddenly, you find all has stopped, and the thing has
happened that Yoga tries to MAKE happen. In Tao it is a happening. In Yoga it is a
hard, long journey of effort. Yoga is male-oriented.
Tao is not female-oriented. Tao is both -- a synthesis. Circulation is masculine energy,
and fixation is feminine energy. Reach to the non-active, reach to the passive through
action. Through effort attain to effortlessness.
IN CARRYING OUT THIS FUNDAMENTAL PRINCIPLE YOU NEED TO SEEK
FOR NO OTHER METHODS, BUT MUST ONLY CONCENTRATE YOUR
THOUGHTS ON IT. BY COLLECTING THE THOUGHTS ONE CAN FLY AND
WILL BE BORN IN HEAVEN.
THE GOLDEN FLOWER IS THE ELIXIR OF LIFE.
It is the secret of all immortality. This is what the Western alchemists used to call 'the
philosopher's stone', what in India is called AMRIT, elixir, nectar. This is an
alchemical treatise, it gives you the secrets for transforming your chemistry into
alchemy, for transforming the baser metal into gold. Right now you are only a baser
metal. But you contain the secrets. If those secrets are worked out, you are
transformed into gold. The gold is immortal.
THE GOLDEN FLOWER IS THE ELIXIR OF LIFE. ALTHOUGH IT WORKS
VERY ACCURATELY, IT IS YET SO FLUID THAT IT NEEDS EXTREME
INTELLIGENCE AND CLARITY, AND THE MOST COMPLETE ABSORPTION
AND TRANQUILLITY. PEOPLE WITHOUT THIS HIGHEST DEGREE OF
INTELLIGENCE AND UNDERSTANDING DO NOT FIND THE WAY; PEOPLE
WITHOUT THIS UTMOST CAPACITY FOR ABSORPTION AND
TRANQUILLITY CANNOT KEEP FAST HOLD OF IT.
Two requirements.
First, one needs intelligence and clarity. Don't be worried about it. Don't start thinking
that if you are. not intelligent then what? Everybody is born intelligent. Intelligence is
an intrinsic quality -- just as everybody is born breathing, everybody is born
intelligent.
The idea that a few people are intelligent and a few are not is utterly wrong -- and has
been dehumanizing many many people -- is very insulting, degrading. All are born
intelligent, although their intelligences may differ in their expressions. One is
intelligent in music, another is intelligent in mathematics, but if you make
mathematics the criterion then the musician looks unintelligent. If you put them both
into one examination where mathematics is the criterion, the musician fails. Change
the criterion, let music be the criterion, and put them both into the examination where
music will decide, then the mathematician looks stupid.
We have chosen certain criteria; that's why many people have been condemned as
stupid -- they are not. I have never come across a single person who is stupid -- it does
not happen -- but his intelligence may be a different kind of intelligence. Poetry needs
a different kind of intelligence than being in business. A poet cannot be a businessman,
and the businessman will find it very difficult to be a poet. One kind of intelligence is
needed in being a politician, another kind of intel-ligence is needed in being a painter.
And there are millions of possibilities.
Remember: everyone is born intelligent, so that is not debarring anybody. You just
have to find your intelligence -- where it is. And once you have found your
intelligence you will be clear.
People are living with unclarity because they are living with wrong ideas about
themselves. Somebody has told you -- a schoolmaster, a headmaster, a university -that you are not intelligent. But their criterion is only a chosen criterion; their criterion
is not applicable to all. The universities are not yet universal. They don't allow every
kind of intelligence, they don't accept all manifestations of intelligence.
Once you have accepted your intelligence and you start respecting it, you will become
clear; there will be no problem.
The poet feels stupid because he cannot be a good businessman. Now this creates
confusion. He becomes inferior in his own eyes, disrespectful, condemning. He tries
to succeed in business but he cannot. This creates great smoke around him. If he
simply understands that he is a poet and he is not meant to be a businessman, and to
succeed as a businessman will be a suicide to him, he has to succeed as a poet... That
is his intelligence, and his intelligence has to flower in his own way. He has not to
imitate anybody else. Maybe the society will not pay for it, because poetry is not
needed as much as bombs are needed. Love is not needed as much as hatred is
needed.
That's why in the films, on the radio, on the television, murder is allowed; it is not
called obscene. But love-making is not allowed; it is called obscene. This society lives
through hate not through love. If somebody is murdering, it is perfectly okay. If
somebody puts a dagger into your heart and the blood rushes like a fountain, it is
perfectly okay. But if somebody hugs you, kisses you, loves you, the society is afraid.
This is strange that love is obscene and murder is not, that lovers are condemned and
soldiers rewarded, that war is right and love is wrong.
If you accept your intelligence, if you accept yourself, you will become clear,
absolutely clear; all clouds will disappear.
And the second thing: you need absorption and tranquillity. Intelligence and clarity
are part of the male mind. Absorption and tranquillity are part of the feminine mind.
Only a woman can absorb, that's why she becomes pregnant -- she has the womb .
These two things are needed together. If you are not intelligent you will not be able to
understand what is being said to you, you will not understand what the Master is
imparting to you. And if you are not feminine, you will not be able to absorb it, you
will not be able to become pregnant with it. And both are needed. You have to be
intelligent, utterly intelligent to see the point. And you have to be utterly absorptive to
keep it in you, so that it becomes part of you.
This is just a background. Slowly slowly we will go into the techniques of how to
circulate the light. Listen attentively, intelligently. Absorb it. It can be one of the
greatest experiences of your life.
The Secret of Secrets, Vol 1
Chapter #2
Chapter title: Empty Eyes
12 August 1978 am in Buddha Hall
Archive code:
7808120
ShortTitle:
SOS102
Audio: Yes
Video:
No
Length: 98 mins
The first question:
Question 1
LATELY SEVERAL FRIENDS HAVE ASKED ME IF I WAS SCEPTICAL
TOWARDS SANNYAS, THE ASHRAM AND YOU. I HAD TO ADMIT TO THE
TRUTH AND SAID, 'YES, AT TIMES I AM.' THIS LEFT ME WITH A FEELING
OF GUILT. HAVE I COMMITTED SOME UNFORGIVABLE, SACRILEGIOUS
CRIME OR IS IT NATURAL TO BE SCEPTICAL OUT OF BEING SURE? I DO
NOT KNOW IF YOU ARE ENLIGHTENED. I CAN ONLY FEEL YOUR BEAUTY
AND TRUST.
Bhava, faith is afraid of doubt -- afraid because it has repressed it. And whatsoever
you repress you will remain afraid of, because it is always there deep inside you,
waiting to take revenge, and whenever the opportunity arises it is going to explode in
you with vengeance. Your faith sits on an earth-quake and every day the doubt
becomes stronger, because every day you have to repress it. Sooner or later it is more
than you can repress, it is more than your faith. Then it simply throws your faith away.
But trust is not afraid of doubt because trust is not against doubt. Trust uses doubt,
trust knows how to use the energy contained in doubt itself. That's the difference
between faith and trust. Faith is false; it creates a pseudo kind of religion, it creates
hypocrites. Trust has a sublime beauty and truth about it. It grows through doubt, it
uses doubt as manure, it transforms doubt. Doubt is a friend, doubt is not the enemy.
And unless your trust has moved through many doubts it will remain impotent. From
where will it gather strength, from where will it gather integration? If there is no
challenge it is bound to remain weak. Doubt is a challenge. If your trust can respond
to the challenge, can befriend your doubt, it will grow through it. And you will not be
a split person -- deep down doubting and just on the surface faithful, believing -- you
will have a kind of unity, you will be an individual, undivided. And that individuality
is what is called 'soul' in the old religions.
The soul is arrived at through doubt, not through believing. Belief is just a mask: you
are hiding your original face. Trust is a transformation: you are becoming more
illumined. And because you are using doubt as a challenge, as an opportunity, there is
never any repression. Slowly slowly doubt disappears, because its energy has been
taken by trust.
Doubt, in fact, is nothing but trust growing. Doubt is trust on the way. Always think of
doubt in such a way: that doubt is trust on the way. Doubt is inquiry and trust is the
fulfillment of the inquiry. Doubt is the question and trust is the answer. The answer is
not against the question -- there will be no possibility of any answer if there is no
question -- the question has created the occasion for the answer to happen.
So, please, never feel guilty around mc. I am utterly against any kind of guilt. Guilt is
absolutely wrong.
But it has been used by the priests and the politicians and the puritans down the ages
-- for centuries. Guilt is a strategy, a strategy to exploit people, to make them feel
guilty. Once you have succeeded in making them feel guilty, they will be your slaves.
Because of the guilt they will never be integrated enough. Because of the guilt they
will remain divided. Because of the guilt they will never be able to accept themselves,
they will be always condemning. Because of the guilt they will be ready to believe in
anything, just to get rid of guilt. They will do anything -- any nonsense, any nonsense
ritual they will perform -- just to get rid of the guilt. Down the centuries the priest has
made people guilty. All the so-called religions exist on your guilt, they don't exist on
the existence of God. They have nothing to do with God and God has nothing to do
with them. They exist on your guilt.
You are afraid, you know that you are wrong: you have to seek the help of somebody
who is not wrong. You know that you are unworthy: you have to bow down, you have
to serve those who are worthy. You know that you cannot trust your-self, because you
are divided. Only an undivided person can trust himself, his feeling, his intuition. You
are always shaking, trembling inside; you need somebody to lean on. And once you
lean on somebody, once you become dependent on somebody, you remain childish,
you never grow. Your mind age remains that of a child. You never attain to any
maturity, you never become independent. And the priest does not want you to become
independent. Independent, and you are lost to him; dependent, and you are his whole
market-place, his whole business.
I am utterly against any kind of guilt. Remember it always: if you start feeling guilty
about something around me, then you are doing it on your own, then you are still
carrying the voices of your parents, the priests within you; you have not yet heard me,
you have not yet listened to me. I want you to be totally free of all guilt.
Once you are free of guilt you are a religious person. That's my definition of a
religious person. Use doubt -- doubt is beautiful -- because it is only through doubt
that the trust attains to maturity. How can it be otherwise? It has to be beautiful -- it is
only through doubt that the trust becomes centred. It is only through doubt that the
trust flowers, blooms. It is the dark night of doubt that brings the golden morning
closer to you. The dark night is not against the dawn, the dark night is the womb for
the dawn. The dawn is getting ready in the very being of the dark night.
Think of doubt and trust as complementary: just as man and woman are, just as night
and day, summer and winter, life and death. Always think of those pairs in terms of
inevitable complementariness, never think in terms of opposition. Even though on the
surface they seem to be opposed, deep down they are friends, helping each other.
Think of a person who has no trust: he will not have any doubt either, because he has
nothing to doubt about. Just think of a person who has no trust at all -- how can he
doubt, what has he to doubt? Only a man of trust has something to doubt. Because
you trust, hence you doubt. Your doubt proves your trust, not otherwise. Think of a
man who cannot doubt -- how can he trust? If he is even incapable of doubt, how can
he be capable of trust?
Trust is the highest form of the same energy; doubt is the lowest rung of the same
ladder and trust is the highest rung of the same ladder. Use doubt, use it joyfully.
There is no need to feel guilty at all. It is perfectly human and natural to feel great
doubts about me sometimes and great doubts about what is going on here. It is
perfectly human -- there is nothing extraordinary in it. If it doesn't happen, then
something seems to be abnormal. But remember that one has to reach to the trust. Use
doubt, but don't forget the goal, don't forget the highest rung of the ladder. Even if you
are standing on the lowest, look at the highest. You have to reach there. In fact, doubt
is pushing you towards that because nobody can feel at ease with doubt.
Have you not watched it? When there is doubt there is uneasiness. Don't change that
uneasiness, don't interpret that uneasiness as guilt. Yes, uneasiness is there, because
doubt means you are uncertain of the ground you are standing on, doubt means you
are ambiguous, doubt means you are not yet a unity. How can you be at ease? You are
a crowd, you are not one person, you are many persons. How can you be at ease?
There must be great noise inside you, one part pulling you in this direction and
another part in that direction. How can you grow if you are pulled in so many
directions simultaneously? There is bound to be unease, tension, anguish, anxiety.
Nobody can live with doubt and in doubt. Doubt pushes you towards trust, doubt says,
'Go and find a place where you can relax, where you can be totally.' Doubt is your
friend. It simply says, 'This is not the home. Go ahead, search, seek, inquire.' It creates
the urge to inquire, to explore.
Once you start seeing doubt as a friend, as an occasion, not against trust but pushing
you towards it, suddenly, guilt disappears. There is great joy. Even when you doubt,
you doubt joyously, you doubt consciously, and you use doubt to find trust. It is
absolutely normal.
You say, 'I do not know if you are enlightened.'
How can you know it? There is no way to know it unless you become enlightened.
How can you know what has happened to me unless it happens to you too? It is
absolutely right to feel that you cannot trust me sometimes. The miracle is that
sometimes you can trust. Just those few moments will be enough. Don't be worried.
Trust has such infinite power. Trust is just like light and doubt is like darkness.
Just a small candle of trust is enough to destroy the darkness of ages. The darkness
cannot say, 'I have lived in this place for so long, I cannot leave so easily and I cannot
leave only because of this small candle.' Even a small candle is more potential than
the darkness of ages, of centuries, of thousands of lives. But it will have to go... once
the light is there it has to go.
Those few moments of trust -- let them be far and few in between, don't be worried -they are enough to destroy all your doubts, slowly slowly. And by 'destroying' I mean
just releasing the energy contained in doubt. Just breaking the shell called doubt... and
deep inside you will find the pure energy to trust. Once it is released more and more
trust will be available to you.
You say, 'I do not know if you are enlightened.'
Good that you don't believe. If you start believing you will stop seeking. A believer
never moves -- he has already believed. That's why there are millions of people
worshipping in the churches, temples, mosques, GURUDWARA... But their worship
is out of belief; because it is out of belief, those millions of people remain irreligious.
They don't search for God, they don't seek God -- they have already accepted. Their
acceptance is lame; they have not struggled for it, they have not earned it. You have to
fight, you have to struggle, you have to earn. Nothing is without a price in life; you
have to pay the price. They have not paid the price. And they think that just by
worshipping in a temple they will attain? They are utter fools, they are wasting their
time! All their worship is just an illusion.
The really religious person cannot believe; he searches. Because he cannot believe, he
remains in doubt, and nobody can be at rest with doubt. One has to seek and search
and to find. Doubt goes on gnawing at your being, goes on goading you: 'Search, seek,
find, and don't be contented before you have found.'
Good that you cannot believe. Only remember: there is no need to believe and there is
no need to disbelieve. And that's happening. And I am happy.
You say, 'I can only feel your beauty and trust.'
That's all that is needed. That's enough, more than enough; that will become the boat
to the other shore. If you can feel my love, if you can feel my trust in you, if you can
feel my hope in you, if you can see that something beautiful has happened although
you don't know what exactly it is -- you cannot define it and you cannot explain it -but you can even feel that something of the beyond...
That's what beauty is: beauty is always of the beyond. Whenever you see a rose
flower and you say, 'It is beautiful,' what do you mean? You say you have seen
something of the beyond. Something invisible has become visible to you; you cannot
prove it. If somebody else standing by your side denies seeing any beauty in the rose,
you cannot prove it to him -- there is no way. You will just have to shrug your
shoulders. You will say, 'Then nothing can be done about it. I see and you don't see,
and that is that.'
You cannot go to the scientist to dissect the rose and find whether it contains beauty
or not. It does not contain it; the beauty is not contained in the rose. The beauty is
from the beyond, it simply dances on the rose. Those who have eyes, they will see;
those who don't have eyes, they will not see. You can take the rose to the chemist; he
will dissect it, he will find everything that is in the rose -- but beauty is not in the rose.
The rose was just an occasion for beauty to descend from the beyond. The rose was
just a screen for the beauty to play upon. The rose was just a stage for the drama to
happen; it is not the drama itself. You take the rose away, you dissect the rose, you cut
it into pieces, you find all the constituents -- but beauty is not a constituent of the rose,
although without the rose the beauty cannot descend.
It is just like the sun rises in the morning and the rays are dancing on the lotus pond.
You don't see the rays themselves, you can't see. That's what THE SECRET OF THE
GOLDEN FLOWER says: you can't see essence, you can't see life, all that you see are
only consequences .
Have you ever seen the light itself? No, you have never seen it. If you think you have
seen light itself, you have not thought about it, you have not pondered over it. You
have seen lighted things, you have not seen light itself. You have seen the lighted
pond, you have seen the lighted lotus, you have seen the lighted face of your woman
or man or your child, you have seen the lighted world, but have you seen the light
itself? If there is nothing for the light to play upon, you will not be able to see it.
That's why the moment the astronauts go away from the earth, even in the daytime,
the sky is dark, utterly dark, because you cannot see light itself and there is nothing
there for the light to play upon. Hence the infinite sky is dark. You see light on the
stars because stars become the playground for the light, but surrounding the stars it is
all darkness because there is nothing to obstruct the light. And unless light is
obstructed you cannot see it.
You cannot see enlightenment, you can see only the consequence of it. You cannot see
what has happened to me, but you can see something has happened, something like x.
There is no need to call it enlightenment either, just x will do. Something mysterious
has happened. And the more you feel me, the more you will become aware of it; and
when you become more aware of it, something inside you will start responding to it.
What has happened to me can trigger a process in you. It cannot be the cause of your
enlightenment, remember; your enlightenment will not be the effect of my
enlightenment. There is no cause/effect relationship between the Master and the
disciple, there is a totally different kind of relationship.
Just in this century Carl Gustav Jung was able to penetrate into the mystery of that
different kind of relationship. He calls it 'synchronicity'. Cause and effect is a
scientific relationship; synchronicity is a poetic relationship. By 'synchronicity' what
is meant is that if something has happened somewhere and you become available to it,
you remain vulnerable to it, something can start responding in you parallel to it. But it
has not been the cause of it, it cannot cause it.
It is just like somebody is playing beautiful music and a great desire arises in you to
dance. It is not caused by the music, it is a parallel response in you. Something that
was fast asleep in you -- the energy to dance -- has been hit; not caused, just hit,
provoked, inspired. It is synchronicity. If it is a cause then it will happen to
everybody.
For example, you are here, three thousand sannyasins are present. I am available to all
of you, but you are not all available to me or, even if you are available to me, you are
available in different ways. The quality differs, the quantity differs. If I can be a cause
of your enlightenment, then all three thousand of you will become enlightened. But I
am not the cause, I can only become a catalytic agent. But for that, you have to be
open towards me. If I were a cause, there would be no need for you to be open to me.
Fire burns whether the wood is open to it or not; it is a cause. Water evaporates at
hundred-degree heat; whether it is open to the heat or not doesn't matter.
Cause and effect is a blind relationship, it is materialistic: it is between matter and
matter. But synchronicity is not material, it is spiritual, it is poetic, it is a love affair. If
you become open to me, something will start happening to you. And remember, I am
not the cause of it. You need not thank me, you need not be grateful to me. I am not
the cause of it. If anybody is the cause of it it is you, because you opened towards me.
I could not have done it alone. There is no doing on my part. I am present, all that is
needed is that you also be present here and something will start happening. And
nobody is doing it, neither I am doing it nor are you doing it. I am available, you
become available, and these two energies fall into a love affair, they start dancing
together.
So don't be worried that you cannot know about my enlightenment.
You say, 'I can only feel your beauty and trust.'
This is enough. This will do. And once it has happened in you, you will know. To
know a Buddha one has to become a Buddha, to know a Christ one has to be a Christ.
The second question:
Question 2
IN THE PAST FEW WEEKS, JUST WHEN I AM FEELING OVERWHELMED
WITH THE MYSTERY AND MIRACLE OF LIFE AND THIS WORLD, I
SUDDENLY FEEL EVERYTHING OUTSIDE ME DESCENDING CLOSER AND
CLOSER UNTIL IT GOES INSIDE MY EYES. I THEN FIND MYSELF LOOKING
AT WHAT SEEMS LIKE A ONE-DIMENSIONAL SCREEN SITTING JUST AT
MY EYES. IT SEEMS AS THOUGH THERE IS NOTHING BUT ME AND I AM
SO ALONE. BUT THEN PEOPLE ARE ON THE SCENE INTERACTING WITH
ME AND I BECOME CONFUSED. AND WHAT ABOUT YOU? YOU ALSO
SEEM JUST PART OF THE PAINTING.
EVEN THOUGH THIS LASTS ONLY A FEW SECONDS, I BECOME SO
TERRIFIED WHEN THIS HAPPENS. IS THIS MY MIND PLAYING WITH ME?
HOW COULD I REALLY BE SO ALONE?
Maitri, one is alone -- aloneness is ultimate -- but aloneness is not loneliness. You are
not lonely. And that's where the whole misunderstanding lies and that's what makes
you so terrified. To be lonely means you are missing the other. To be lonely is a
negative state. To be lonely means you are feeling empty: you are searching for the
other -- you believe in the other, you depend on the other -- and the other is not there.
And because the other is not there, there is great nothingness, but that nothingness is a
kind of negative nothingness. You are groping for the other, and you cannot find the
other, and everything starts disappearing. And when everything starts disappearing the
real problem is that you cannot remain yourself.
When everything else has disappeared, you will have to disappear too, because you
depend on others, you are just a reflection of the others. You have seen your face in
the eyes of others; they have been mirrors. Now there are no longer any mirrors, who
are you? All has disappeared, then how can you remain in this loneliness? You also
start evaporating and that creates great fear, the fear of death.
The ego starts dying and the ego starts searching somewhere for somebody to cling to.
And that's why soon you start interacting with people. Out of the fear of death you
start getting occupied with others again. And then great confusion is bound to be there
because your natural being was moving into a deep nothingness but you became
frightened and you pulled yourself out of it. You created a contradiction in the energy:
the energy was going in and you jumped out, hence the confusion. But aloneness is
ultimate. And when I say aloneness is ultimate, I mean that there is only one, there are
not many. You are not separate from existence.
Nobody is separate from anybody else, existence is utterly one. The very idea of
separation is our misery, the very idea that 'I am an island' creates hell. Nobody is an
island, we belong to the continent, we are part of this oceanic existence, past, present,
future. In all directions and all dimensions, it is all one. In fact, the word alone means
'all-oneness' -- that is alone-ness. 'All one' is alone.
But for that, Maitri, you will have to go a little more into this nothingness. First the
nothingness is negative; its outermost core, the shell part is negative. If you go a little
deeper you will find the positive negativeness. The positive negativeness is what
Buddha calls NIRVANA, enlightenment, SHUNYA. When you move deeper and you
have crossed the shell part, the hard negative part, the dark part, suddenly there is
light. The night is over.
And then you feel a totally new kind of aloneness which you have never felt before,
and then you know the distinction between loneliness and aloneness. In loneliness you
were searching for the other, in aloneness the other has disappeared and so has
disappeared the ego. Now there is nobody inside and nobody outside, and all is one.
This unity, this absolute oneness brings benediction.
Then there is no fear, there cannot be, because now there can be no death -- how can
there be fear? The death has already happened, that which could die has died. Now
you are in the world of immortality, you have found the elixir. This is the nectar we
will be talking about again and again in these sutras of THE SECRET OF THE
GOLDEN FLOWER. This is the nectar, AMRIT. This is the elixir, the philosopher's
stone. Once you have tasted of it, all death has disappeared, all time has disappeared,
all distinctions have disappeared. Now you will see the tree as your extension, the
cloud as your extension, or you as the extension of the tree. Now the centre is
everywhere and nowhere. The 'I' does not exist anywhere anymore. The very word
has become utterly false.
Once a Christian missionary asked a Zen Master, 'Isn't the end-point of man's journey
the union with God?'
The Zen Master said, 'The end-point of man's journey is NOT union with God,
because there has never been a separation. All that is needed is the flash of insight that
makes one see it.'
Tao, Zen, Tantra -- their insight is far more deep than the so-called market-place
religion. Christianity thinks in terms of joining with God, of being one with God, but
the Zen Master's insight is far more penetrating, and deeper. He says: But where has
there been a separation? When? It has not happened at all, you have been dreaming
that you are separate. Just come out of the dream! There is no union, you have
ALWAYS been one with existence. Not for a single moment has there been a
separation, there is no possibility of separation.
Maitri, you are coming to a very very important, significant insight. If you don't get
frightened and run out of this experience, you may attain the flash of insight that
makes one see it: that all is one.
But fear always comes. It is not new -- each seeker has to go through it. And it is
really so much that before you have thought about it you have already run out of it. It
is so frightening that it does not give you time, space, to ponder over it -- what to do.
It is like the house is on fire. You don't think anymore: 'Should I get out or not?' There
are no more alternatives left; you simply run out of the house without thinking. There
is no time to think. Later on you can think. When you are outside the house, sitting
under a tree, you can think and ponder in luxury. But when the house is on fire, how
can you think? Action is needed immediately and thought is never immediate.
That's the problem: when you go into your aloneness, at first it is very lonely, because
you have lived with the idea of the other. It was a dream idea; the other is not there. 'I'
and 'thou' -- both are false.
Martin Buber says that the ultimate quality of prayer is a dialogue between 'I' and
'thou'. That's where Judaism got stuck. The ultimate prayer is not a dialogue at all, the
ultimate prayer is a monologue, because the other is not there.
A Zen Master used to call his own name in the morning; every morning he would
shout his own name, and say, 'How are you?' And he would answer, 'I am perfectly
well, sir.'
You will think he is mad, but this is prayer. There is no 'I', there is no 'thou'. You have
to play the part of both. It is a game, it is a play. Prayer is a play: playing with your
own self. There is no 'other'.
But Judaism got stuck there, with the idea of 'I' and 'thou'. That's why they were so
much against Jesus, because he declared -- although not in such a drastic way as a Zen
Master declares... It was not possible to be more drastic than he was in his situations.
But still he said, 'I and my Father are one.' But that was enough to infuriate people.
People were mad. 'What is he saying? Declaring himself God?' He is not saying
anything, he is not declaring himself God, he is simply saying there is no God and no
devotee, there is only One. You can call it 'devotee' in a certain situation, you can call
it 'God' in another situation. That's why he says, 'I and my Father are one. If you look
at my body I am the son, if you look at my soul I am the Father. If you look at my
form I am a man, son of man, if you look at my essence I am son of God.'
That's why he goes on repeating it again and again. Sometimes he says: I am son of
man, and sometimes he says: I am son of God. Looks contradictory, it is not.
Maitri, you say, 'In the past few weeks, just when I am feeling overwhelmed with the
mystery and miracle of life and this world, I suddenly feel everything outside me
descending closer and closer until it goes inside my eyes.'
All that you see is a projection of your eyes. The world as it Is you have not seen yet.
What you have seen is just a projection, so when you start moving inwards,
everything that you have projected on the world will come closer and closer and
closer to the eyes and will disappear into your eyes. This world is a projection of your
eyes. You don't see that which is, you project a dream upon it.
For example, there is a great diamond, the Kohinoor. Now, it is just a stone like any
other stone, but we have projected so much value on it. Many people have died
because of the Kohinoor; whosoever possessed it was killed. Now see the whole
nonsense of it: just that stone has proved very murderous because of the projections of
people. It is one of the most precious things in the world, the costliest thing in the
world, but if man disappears from the earth will it be anything more than any other
pebble? It will be just lying there with other pebbles in the same way. There will be no
distinction, no difference.
From where does the difference come? Our eyes project, we make it special. We go
on pouring our desire, greed, onto it. It becomes very precious, and very dangerous
too. If you are meditating on the Kohinoor, silently seeing it, seeing it, one moment
will come when you see that something from the Kohinoor is coming closer and
closer to your eyes and then it disappears into the eyes. Then you open your eyes -the Kohinoor has disappeared. There is something, but you had not known it before
and the one that you had known before is no more there.
A beautiful experience, tremendously significant. Go into it, go deeper and deeper
into it. Let the whole world disappear. Yes, I will also disappear into that, because that
which I am you have not seen yet and that which you see is your projection. Your
projection will disappear, and when all your projections have disappeared, then the
world comes in its nakedness, as it is.
And the wonder of it! Then small things are so wonderful then ordinary pebbles are so
wonderful. Because of the Kohinoor they cannot be wonderful; you have projected all
on the Kohinoor, you have not left any love for anything else. Once the projection
disappears and you open your eyes, EMPTY EYES, not projecting anything at all, just
seeing whatsoever it is, with no idea what it is, with no names, no labels, no
interpretations, just seeing, emptied, passive, the world comes to have a totally
different meaning, significance.
'I suddenly feel everything outside me descending closer and closer until it goes inside
my eyes. I then find myself looking at what seems like a one-dimensional screen
sitting just at my eyes.'
Perfectly good and perfectly right. This is the way one moves deeper into meditation.
'It seems as though there is nothing but me and I am so alone.'
The only problem is that you are still there, that's why you feel so alone. You mean
lonely. The 'I' remains alone; 'thou' has disappeared, and without the 'thou' the 'I' is
lonely. The 'I' exists only in relationship; the 'I' is not an entity but a relationship -- it
cannot exist without the 'thou', it needs the 'thou'. How can the lover exist without the
beloved? Once the beloved is not there the lover starts disappearing. You need the
beloved. Love is a relationship, so is the 'I' a relationship. And because you are still
protecting the 'I' somehow, you have not yet been courageous enough to let it go too.
Just as the whole world has disappeared, let this 'I' also disappear. It will be
frightening in the beginning; it will be a death process -- it is a death process. It will
look like you are committing suicide, it will look... Who knows where you are going,
whether you will be coming back again or not? It will look as if madness is exploding
in you. And great fear will arise and in that fear you will be thrown out again and
again. It will happen many times. Slowly slowly you will have to learn not to be so
afraid; there is nothing to fear. You are very close to the treasure.
These are the moments when a Master is needed to help you, to give you courage, to
hold your hand, to say to you, 'Maitri, all is perfectly right. Go in!'
I had to pass through the same and I was also as much afraid as you are. And many
times I came out just as you are coming out. And you are more fortunate than me
because I had no Master -- nobody to give me courage, nobody to hold my hand. I
was simply struggling by myself. There was nobody who could tell me what was
going to happen ahead. I had to grope and go into it -- and it was dangerous, it was
maddening. And the people who were around me in those days had already started
believing that I had gone mad. Everybody who loved me was worried -- my friends
were worried, my teachers, my professors in the university were worried, my parents
were worried, everybody was worried. But I had to go. Many times I went out, the
fear was so much. I am perfectly acquainted with the fear.
But one day, one has to face it and go through it, because again and again you fall
upon it and you rush out. And the out is not meaningful anymore: the out is all empty.
And you come inside... and the fear. You have to choose between the two. The outside
is no more relevant. You can go on making empty gestures, but how long can you
deceive yourself? You know the screen is empty and all your projections are dead.
And you go inside... and the fear, a great storm of fear arises.
But there is no other way -- one has to go through it to know exactly what happens
after this death. The sooner you gather courage the better. And I say again you are
more fortunate, because I am standing ahead of you in that utter emptiness, calling
you forth again and again 'Come on! Come ye all! Come!' And I go on calling you
forth just as Christ called Lazarus from the grave 'Lazarus, come out!'
In fact, that parable is not a historical fact, it is a parable. It is a parable of moving
from the outside to the inside. The outside becomes a grave when it loses meaning.
The outside becomes just futility, a wasteland, a grave. Nothing grows in it anymore,
nothing flowers in it anymore -- no possibility of any song and dance -- and you live
only in empty motions, empty gestures.
But the Master is standing where you are afraid to go and he calls from there. I am not
only standing outside you; you will meet me in that innermost nothingness -- not as
me, of course, not as a person but as a presence; not separate from you but one with
you.
That's why I insist so much on sannyas. Unless you are a sannyasin it will be difficult
for me to call you from the inside. I can call you from the outside, but then you
remain just a student. I can teach you a few things -- that will become knowledge -but I cannot call you from your inside, from your very heart. And the need is there.
That is possible only if you become a disciple, if you are a sannyasin, if you are ready
to go with me, if you are ready to trust me, at least in some moments. I will use those
'some moments' and sooner or later they will become your very state of being.
So go on. Let this 'me', this 'I' also disappear. And once this 'I' disappears there is no
loneliness, there is aloneness. And aloneness is beautiful, aloneness is freedom, it is a
very positive feeling of well-being, a positive feeling of great joy. It is a very great,
festive moment, it is celebration.
'It seems as though there is nothing but me and I am so alone.'
Yes, if 'I' remains you will remain lonely.
'But then people are on the scene interacting with me and I become confused. And
what about you? You also seem just part of the painting.'
Allow me to become part of the painting on the outside, only then can I start working
from the inside. Let me disappear from the outside so that you can see me inside. And
that will be my truth. And that is the truth of Christ and that is the truth of the Buddha
and Krishna. That is the truth of all the Masters, of all those who have become
awakened.
'Even though this lasts only a few seconds, I become so terrified when this happens.'
It is natural, but gather courage. I am with you. Go in.
'Is this my mind playing with me?
No, not at all. Mind creates the fear, not this experience. Mind is playing when it
creates the fear. It is not mind when you see all your projections coming closer and
closer and disappearing into your eyes. It is not mind when everything becomes a
white empty screen. It is not mind, it is meditation: it is movement towards no-mind.
MIND creates the fear. When it comes very close to the no-mind, it becomes so afraid
of death that it creates fear. And in that fear you rush out again.
Next time it happens, Maitri, go in, in spite of the fear. Just be like the elephant who
goes on moving although the dogs go on barking. Let the dogs of the mind bark. Go
on moving like an elephant. Don't care at all about the mind -- what it is saying.
The third question:
Question 3
WHAT HAPPENS WHEN AN ENLIGHTENED MAN SLIDES BACK INTO
DELUSION?
Fallen flowers don't jump back to the branches. That is not possible. The enlightened
person cannot slide back into illusion. There is no way; for many reasons there is no
way.
The first reason: the enlightened man is no more -- who will slide back?
Enlightenment is. There is nothing like an 'enlightened person'. Enlightenment is
perfectly there, but there is nobody who is enlightened. That is just a way of speaking,
a linguistic fallacy. Who will slide back? The one who could have slid back has
disappeared. And where can one slide back? Once you have found it is illusion, it is
no more there. When once you have seen it is no more there, it is finished! Where can
you go back? It is not possible.
But the idea arises in our mind because in life we have never seen anything like that.
We attain one thing and we fall back; we are in love and then we fall back out of it.
We fall in love and we fall out of it. We are happy and then we become unhappy, we
are feeling good and then we start feeling very bad. We know the duality, the duality
never disappears, so we naturally think about enlightenment also as if one can slide
back. Enlightenment is the realization of the non-dual. That's why Zen Masters say
SAMSARA IS NIRVANA: the very world is NIRVANA, the very illusion is truth;
there is no distinction left. It is not that this is truth and that is illusion; all is truth,
only truth is. Where can you fall back? You have gone beyond the point of no return.
Nobody has ever fallen back.
And don't be worried about these people -- you should worry about yourself. First
become enlightened and then try to slide back, and then you will see -- it is easier to
become enlightened! It is very difficult to slide back. I have tried, but I have not been
successful.
The last question:
Question 4
PLEASE EXPLAIN ABOUT BLISS AND MISERY,FOR WHENEVER I
ENCOUNTER LOVE OR BEAUTY, I ONLY FEEL TREMENDOUS PAIN BUT
NOT BLISS, AND I DON'T UNDERSTAND THIS.
Suparna, you have been told again and again, you have been taught again and again,
that to be joyous is wrong and to be miserable is right. You may not have been told so
directly, but indirectly you have been conditioned and hypnotized for misery. You
have started believing that misery is natural. You see misery all around, misery
abounds, everybody is miserable. It seems to be the way things are.
When you were born, you were a happy child -- as every child is happy. It has not
happened otherwise, never. Whenever a child is born he is happy, utterly happy. And
that's why children look very selfish: they only think of themselves, they are not
worried about the world. And they are happy about small things. A butterfly in the
garden, and the utter joy and their wonder -- at small things, at nothings; but they are
happy, they are naturally happy.
But slowly slowly we cripple their happiness, we destroy it. We cannot tolerate so
much happiness. The world is very miserable and we have to prepare them for the
world. So indirectly we start indoctrinating them that 'The world is misery,' that 'You
cannot afford to be happy,' that 'Happiness is just a hope, how can you be happy?
Don't be so selfish! There is so much misery all around -- feel for others, consider
others.' Slowly slowly the child gets the feeling that to be happy is a kind of sin. How
can you be happy when the world is in such misery?
People write letters to me asking: 'How can you teach people meditation when the
world is in such a misery? How can one be happy when people are starving?' As if by
being unhappy you will help them! As if by not being meditative you will be of any
kind of service to them! As if wars will disappear If you don't meditate, and poverty
will disappear if you are not happy!
But misery has been put on a pedestal, misery has been worshipped. I always suspect
that Christianity became the greatest religion because of the cross. It represents misery,
suffering. Krishna could not become a great religion because of his flute because of
his dance. Even those who worship him feel a little guilty about him. How can you be
so happy and dancing with girlfriends? And not just one -- thousands! And singing
and playing on the flute! And people are dying and there is death and starvation and
war and violence and all kinds of things are going around. It is hell, and you are
playing on your flute! It seems callous, it seems cruel. Jesus seems to be more suitable,
dying on the cross. Look at the face of Jesus! The way Christians have painted him
his face is very long, sad. He is carrying the whole burden of the earth. He has come
to take all the sins of all the people on himself. He seems to be the greatest servant -very unselfish.
But my feeling is that Christians have depicted Christ wrongly. This Christ is a myth,
the real Christ was more like Krishna. In fact, if you go deep down into the word
'Christ' you will be surprised: it comes from 'Krishna'; its root is 'Krishna'. He must
have been a very joyous man, otherwise how can you think of him eating, drinking,
making merry? There are so many scenes where friends have gathered and they are
eating and drinking and gossipping. He is not always 'gospelling', sometimes he is
gossipping too! And he seems to be the only messenger from God who drinks and eats
well and enjoys the small pleasures of life. My feeling is that if Zen Masters were to
create a religion out of Jesus, they would make him laugh on the cross -- a belly laugh.
Jesus would have as big a belly as Bodhidharma! And the belly would be shaking like
an earthquake with great laughter! And that would have been more true, far more true.
Even in Japan and China the statue of the Buddha is made with a big belly. In India
they don't make that big belly, no, not at all. The Indian concept, the yogic concept is
that the belly has to be very small and the chest has to be big, because the yogic
breathing is a false breathing, it is not natural. It can make a Mohammed Ali out of
you but not a Buddha. It will give you the shape of a Mr Universe, but have you seen
any other kinds of people in the world who are more ugly? Mr Universe seems to be
the ugliest. I don't think any woman can fall in love with a Mr Universe. He looks so
animalistic -- all muscles and no man, just a kind of mechanism. Just see his muscles
moving -- just a kind of mechanism, a machine, but no soul! The Indian statue of
Buddha is the yogic statue. When they made Buddha's statue in China, they made it
with a big belly.
When one laughs and when one breathes naturally, the belly becomes slowly bigger,
because then one breathes from the belly and not from the chest -- the breath goes the
whole way down. If Zen were to make a religion out of Christianity Jesus would be
on the cross, but with laughter, such laughter that it would resound down the centuries.
But that may not have been a successful religion, because how would it suit the
people who know only crying and weeping? He would look completely eccentric,
outlandish. To be on the cross and sad looks perfectly right, because everybody is on a
certain cross and sad.
And you must have been taught from your very childhood that the world is a wrong
place. How can you be happy in this place? We are suffering a kind of punishment.
God ordered Adam and Eve to leave paradise because they disobeyed, and humanity
is under that curse. How can you be happy? To be a Christian and happy will be a
contradiction in terms.
So, Suparna, you must have been taught that the world is a miserable place; misery is
perfectly right in it, in tune with it. And everybody is miserable; it will be very hard
and cruel on your part to be happy and joyous. That's why people feel guilty and hold
back even when there are moments to enjoy.
Larson took Charlotte for a drive way out in the country and parked the car in a
desolate stretch. 'If you try to molest me,' said Charlotte, 'I'll scream.'
'What good would that do?' asked Larson. 'There's not a soul around for miles.'
'I know,' said Charlotte, 'but I want to satisfy my conscience before I start having a
good time.'
People even make love with sad faces as if they are on the cross -- serious, doing a
duty. And even if they want to enjoy, they hide it, it 'doesn't look right'; they feel
guilty.
If people really make love with joy, they will scream, they will shout, they will cry,
they will weep, they will laugh. One never knows what kind of emotions will surface,
so it is better to keep yourself in control, otherwise you will look so foolish. And then
what will the neighbours think? And modern walls are so thin that you even have to
make love in a yoga posture -- SHAVASANA, the dead-body posture. 'And be
finished with it as soon as possible, don't let it become orgasmic. What are you doing?
And Jesus suffered for you on the cross! And you are shouting with joy? Think of
Jesus, poor Jesus, what will he think of you? And think of God -- who is a kind of
peeping Torn who always looks through keyholes -- what will he think?'
If you think of all the gods and then the angels and the Christs and the saints -- and
they are all watching you making love, and with such relish -- you will suffer in hell!
It is better to keep control, it is good to feel guilty. That's why after making love
people feel a kind of sadness, a kind of frustration, as if they have done something
criminal. Again they enjoyed themselves and 'that is not right'.
Just see. Whenever you are feeling miserable something feels good. It will look like a
contradiction, but it is like this: whenever you are miserable you feel blissful and
whenever you are blissful you feel miserable.
You say, 'Please explain about bliss and misery, for whenever I encounter love or
beauty I only feel tremendous pain but not bliss, and I don't understand this.'
You will not be able to understand this at all because your whole understanding has
been poisoned. You will have to drop the whole mind! There is no need to understand.
You have to go into it with innocence, not with understanding, because that
understanding is again a kind of calculation. That understanding is again the
knowledge that has been given by the society, and that knowledge is creating the
whole trouble. You have to become a child again, innocent.
But you want to understand. Forget all about understanding! Understanding is again
calculation, cunningness.
I have heard...
An elderly couple went to a doctor. The man said, 'We want to know if we are making
love properly. Will you look at us?'
'Go ahead,' said the doctor. They made love.
'You are making love perfectly,' the doctor said. 'That will be $10.'
They came back six weeks in a row and did the same thing. On the seventh visit the
doctor said, 'What are you coming here like this for -- I told you you are making love
properly!'
'She can't come to my house,' said the man, 'and I can't go to her house. A motel costs
$20. You charge us $10 and we get $8 back from Medicare.'
Don't be calculating, don't be cunning with life. Now what kind of love will this be?
Business and business and business... Knowledge is needed for business, innocence is
needed for life. Knowledge is a must in the market-place, but not needed at all when
you are moving into the mysteries. You cannot know, you can only be. Drop this mind,
drop all this conditioning, and start moving. When you feel joyous, Feel joyous, help
yourself to feel joyous, dance, sing. The old habits will pull you back -- don't listen to
them.
You will have to get rid of the old habits slowly slowly. It will be a kind of struggle,
because no habit leaves you easily. But these habits are against you and against God,
because anything that is against joy is against God. If God can be defined by any
word, that word is 'bliss' and nothing else.
Suparna, whenever you feel something beautiful and the pain arises in you, that pain
is not in your being, that pain is in your mind. Your being is trying to go into the
beautiful, but your mind is pulling you back. Whenever you feel love arising, bliss
arising, and pain also, choose the bliss. Neglect the pain, ignore it. Ignoring it, it will
die; if you go on paying attention to it you will feed it. Attention is food. Never pay
attention to anything that is wrong, otherwise you are helping it to be there, you are
giving it more and more strength. Ignore it -- there is nothing better than ignoring it.
Yes, let it be there, just say, 'Okay, you be there. You are just a hangover from my past.
You be there. I am going ahead,.l am not going to listen to you.'
Listen to blissful provocations, always go with them, and you are moving in the right
direction -- you are moving towards God. Never listen to anything that gives you guilt,
pain, misery -- you are moving away from God. Whenever you are miserable, you are
in hell -- farthest away from God -- and whenever you are utterly joyous, you ARE in
God, you are in heaven.
You say, 'Please explain about bliss and misery.'
Misery is unnatural, bliss is your nature. Misery is taught by others, bliss is given by
God. Misery is a conditioning, bliss is your inner soul, your essence. Misery is
personality, just the structure around you; bliss is your freedom, it is unstructured.
'Please explain about bliss and misery, for whenever I encounter love or beauty I only
feel tremendous pain but not bliss, and I don't understand this.'
Don't try to understand this at all. Just leave the pain there, accept it for a few days,
and go into love -- go into love madly. Go into beauty, dance around a tree, and you
will feel something of the shape of the tree has started reaching you. Dance under the
stars. In the beginning you may feel that your legs are not moving and you have to
move -- because you have been forced to live without dance for so long, your legs
have forgotten the language of dance. But soon they will learn, because it is a natural
language.
Each child knows how to dance, each child knows how to be joyous. You will have to
learn it again. But because it is natural, it comes fast. Just a few efforts and, suddenly,
one day you are out of the trap. Your crutches have to be thrown away. Even if
sometimes you fall, it is perfectly good, but you have to stand on your own feet. The
crutches of the society, of the organized religion, of the priests, have to be thrown
even if for d few days you will feel impoverished. It is natural to feel impoverished
for a few days; you have to accept it. But if you go on moving towards the natural,
you will find Tao in your life.
Tao is a natural flowering. Follow nature. Nobody wants to be miserable and
everybody is. They are not following nature. Nobody wants to be anything other than
blissful and nobody is blissful. Listen to the desire -- the deepest desire indicates the
right path. Your longing is for bliss, for beauty, for something that will overwhelm
you, for something that will take you to the other shore, for something which will be
so tremendous and incredible that the past and the future will be washed away and
you will be just herenow.
But don't try to understand. If you start trying to understand, you will become a victim
of psychoanalysis. And the analysis is a process AD INFINITUM. You can go on
analyzing and analyzing and it is never finished. There is not a single person in the
world who is totally psychoanalyzed, there can never be.
This is where I differ from psychoanalysis. Don't go into analysis. Put the whole mind
aside. Jump out of it! There is no need to understand. All that is needed is to live,
authentically live. All that is needed is to be.
The Secret of Secrets, Vol 1
Chapter #3
Chapter title: The Atomic Moment
13 August 1978 am in Buddha Hall
Archive code:
7808130
ShortTitle:
SOS103
Audio: Yes
Video:
No
Length: 110 mins
MASTER LU-TSU SAID: ONLY THE PRIMAL SPIRIT AND THE TRUE
NATURE OVERCOME TIME AND SPACE.
THE PRIMAL SPIRIT IS BEYOND THE POLAR DIFFERENCES. HERE IS THE
PLACE WHENCE HEAVEN AND EARTH DERIVE THEIR BEING. WHEN
STUDENTS UNDERSTAND HOW TO GRASP THE PRIMAL SPIRIT THEY
OVERCOME THE POLAR OPPOSITES OF LIGHT AND DARKNESS AND
TARRY NO LONGER IN THE THREE WORLDS BUT ONLY HE WHO HAS
ENVISIONED HUMAN NATURE'S ORIGINAL FACE IS ABLE TO DO THIS.
WHEN MEN ARE SET FREE FROM THE WOMB THE PRIMAL SPIRIT
DWELLS IN THE SQUARE INCH BUT THE CONSCIOUS SPIRIT DWELLS
BELOW IN THE HEART. THIS HEART IS DEPENDENT ON THE OUTSIDE
WORLD. IF A MAN DOES NOT EAT FOR ONE DAY EVEN IT FEELS
EXTREMELY UNCOMFORTABLE. IF IT HEARS SOMETHING TERRIFYING IT
THROBS; IF IT HEARS SOMETHING ENRAGING IT STOPS; IF IT IS FACED
WITH DEATH IT BECOMES SAD; IF IT SEES SOMETHING BEAUTIFUL IT IS
DAZZLED. BUT THE HEAVENLY HEART IN THE HEAD, WHEN WOULD IT
HAVE MOVED IN THE LEAST? DOST THOU ASK: CAN THE HEAVENLY
HEART NOT MOVE? THEN I ANSWER: HOW COULD THE TRUE THOUGHT
IN THE SQUARE MOVE!
THE LOWER HEART MOVES LIKE A STRONG, POWERFUL COMMANDER
WHO DESPISES THE HEAVENLY RULER BECAUSE OF HIS WEAKNESS,
AND HAS USURPED THE LEADERSHIP IN AFFAIRS OF STATE. BUT WHEN
THE PRIMAL CASTLE CAN BE FORTIFIED AND DEFENDED, THEN IT IS AS
IF A STRONG AND WISE RULER SAT UPON THE THRONE. THE EYES START
THE LIGHT CIRCULATING LIKE TWO MINISTERS AT THE RIGHT AND LEFT
WHO SUPPORT THE RULER WITH ALL THEIR MIGHT. WHEN RULE IN THE
CENTRE IS THUS IN ORDER, ALL THOSE REBELLIOUS HEROES WILL
PRESENT THEMSELVES WITH LANCES REVERSED READY TO TAKE
ORDERS.
THE WAY TO THE ELIXIR OF LIFE KNOWS AS SUPREME MAGIC
SEED-WATER, SPIRIT-FIRE, AND THOUGHT-EARTH: THESE THREE. WHAT
IS SEED-WATER? IT IS THE TRUE, ONE ENERGY: (EROS). SPIRIT-FIRE IS
THE LIGHT: (LOGOS). THOUGHT-EARTH IS INTUITION.
ONE DAY, a king called his clever jester and gave him a staff in front of all the court
saying, 'Take this staff as a wand of office and keep it till you find a greater fool than
yourself. If you find one, give this wand to him.'
Some time later, the king was sick and lay dying. He wanted to see his jester, of
whose truthfulness he was sure. When the jester came, the king said to him, 'I have
called you to tell you that I am going on a long journey.'
'Where are you going?' asked the jester.
'To a faraway country -- to another world.'
'My master, have you made provision for your journey and your stay there?'
'None whatever, my little fool.'
'Have you any friends to welcome you there?'
'No one!' replied the king.
Then the jester shook his head sadly and put the staff into the king's hand and said,
'Take this staff, your Majesty. This belongs to you, for you are going to another world
without preparation. Surely this wand belongs to you and to nobody else.'
Life is an occasion to prepare for death and the beyond. If you don't prepare for death
and for the beyond you are a fool; you are missing a great opportunity.
Life is only an opportunity. This life that you know is not real life, it is only an
opportunity to attain to real life. The real life is just hidden somewhere in this life, but
it has to be provoked, it has to be awakened. It is fast asleep, it is not yet aware of
itself. And if your real life is not aware of itself, your whole so-called life will be
nothing but a long dream. And it cannot be sweet either -- it will be a nightmare.
To live without being rooted in the real life is to live like a tree without being rooted
in the soil. That's why there is no beauty, that's why there is no grace. That's why you
don't see the splendour of man that the Buddhas talk about.
Jesus goes on saying again and again, 'The kingdom of God is within you.' But you
don't seem to be like an emperor. Jesus says to his disciples, 'Look at the lilies in the
field. How beautiful they are! Even Solomon, the great king, was not so beautiful
attired in all his grandeur as these poor lily flowers.'
Why are the lilies so beautiful and man so ugly? Why is only man ugly? Have you
ever seen an ugly parrot, or an ugly peacock, or an ugly lion, or an ugly deer?
Ugliness seems to be something human.
A peacock is a peacock and a deer is a deer. But a man is not necessarily a man. A
man is man only when he is a Buddha or a Christ or a Krishna -- when he has become
aware of his total being. Otherwise you live groping in the dark; you live in the dark
caves of the unconscious.
You only appear to be conscious. Your consciousness is very fragile, it is very
momentary. It is a very thin surface -- it is not even skin-deep -- just a little scratch
and you lose your consciousness. Somebody insults you; just a word, or just a glance,
and all your consciousness is gone and you are a rage, anger, violence, aggression. In
a moment your humanity disappears, you are again wild, again an animal. And man
can fall below the animals, because when he falls there is nothing to stop him. Man
can rise above the angels, but it rarely happens because to rise above the angels is an
uphill task, arduous. One has to work for it. It needs hard work, it needs guts, courage,
to explore the unknown.
Millions of people are born and die, but they never live. Their life is only apparent,
because they remain rooted in unconsciousness. And whatsoever you do on the
surface may not be true about you at all; in fact, exactly the opposite is the case.
That's why Sigmund Freud has to go into your dreams to see your reality. Just see the
irony of it: your reality has to be searched for in your dreams, not in your reality. You
cannot be believed -- what you say about yourself. Your dreams have to be asked,
because you have become so false and you are wearing so many masks that it is
almost impossible to penetrate to your original face.
But it is very difficult to know your original face even from dreams and dream
analysis. Who is going to do the analysis? Freud is as unconscious as you are. One
unconscious person is trying to interpret the dreams of another unconscious person.
His interpretations are bound to be very limited; his interpretations will reflect more
about him than about you.
That's why if you go to a Freudian analyst with the same dream you will get a
different interpretation than you will get if you go to a Jungian analyst or to an
Adlerian analyst. And now there are many. And you will be puzzled: a single dream
has different interpretations. They are not saying anything about you, they are saying
something about themselves. The Jungian is saying, 'I am a Jungian. This is my
interpretation.'
Your dreams cannot reveal your truth. If your conscious activities cannot reveal you,
how can your sleep activities reveal you? But, still, Freud is on the right track. One
has to go a little more deeply. One has to go beyond the dreams to a state of mind
where no thought, no dream, no desire exists; when all thinking... And dreaming is a
kind of thinking, a primitive kind of thinking, thinking through pictures, but it is still
thinking. When you have gone beyond thinking, and if you can still remain alert,
aware -- as if one is fast asleep but still alert, and deep down at the very core of one's
being a lamp goes on burning, a small candle of light -- then you will see your
original face. And to see your original face is to be back in the Garden of Eden. Then
you drop all your clothes.
Your personality consists only of clothes and clothes and clothes -- clothes upon
clothes. Remember two words which will be very important to understand this strange
but immensely valuable book, THE SECRET OF THE GOLDEN FLOWER: one
word is 'essence', the other word is 'personality'.
'Personality' comes from a root, PERSONA which means a mask. In ancient days, the
actors in Greek dramas used to wear masks. PERSONA means a mask. 'Personality'
comes from PERSONA. The actors used to wear one mask, you are wearing many,
because for different situations you need different masks. When you are talking to
your boss you need one kind of mask. And when you are talking to your servant, of
course, you need another kind of mask. How can you use the same mask?
Have you ever watched? When you are talking to your boss, you are all smiles; your
every breath says, 'Yes, sir.' Even though you are offended, angry, you are ready to
kiss his feet. And when you are talking to your servant, have you seen the arrogance
on your face? You have never smiled. How can you smile talking to your servant? It is
impossible. You have to dehumanize him. How can you smile and relate to him as a
human being? You have to possess him as a thing: he is a slave. You have to behave in
a different way than you behave with your boss. There, you are a servant; he remains
arrogant, he remains bossy. When you are talking to a friend you have a different
mask to use. When you are talking to a stranger, of course, a different mask is needed.
You have to use many masks, and you have many faces, and you go on changing them
as circumstances change. Your personality consists only of false faces.
And what is essence? Essence is your original face, without any masks. Essence is
that which you brought into the world when you were born. Essence is that which was
with you in the womb. Essence is that which has been given to you by God -- or
whatsoever you call totality, the whole, existence. Essence is a gift from existence to
you.
Personality is a gift of the society, parents, school, college, culture, civilization.
Personality is not you, it is pseudo.
And we continue to polish this personality, and we have completely forgotten the
essence. And unless you remember the essence, you will have lived in vain, because
real life consists of essence. A real life is the life of essence. You can call it 'soul', or
'God within you', or whatsoever you will. But remember the distinction.
You are not your clothes -- not even your psychological clothes.
I must remind you of Moses. When he came face to face with God, when he saw God
on the mountains as fire arising out of a green bush -- and the bush was not burning,
the bush was as fresh, as green as ever -- he was puzzled. He could not believe his
eyes. It was impossible... such fire! The bush was aflame and yet the bush was not
burning. And then he heard from the bush a voice coming to him, 'Moses, put off your
shoes, because you are on holy ground.'
This is one of the most beautiful of Jewish parables.
God is the fire, your personality is just the bush. And God is a cool fire -- it will not
burn your personality, the personality can remain green. God gives you so much
freedom that if you want to be false, it is allowed, it is okay with him. If you want to
be pseudo, it is allowed. Freedom means that you can be right or you can be wrong -this is up to you. Your essence is there, the flame is there, and your personality is also
there. The personality is false, and naturally one will think, 'Why doesn't the fire
within you burn it?' The fire is cool, the fire cannot burn it. If you have decided to
have this personality, the fire allows it. You can remain green in your personality, the
personality can go on gathering more and more foliage: you can become more and
more false, you can become utterly false. You can be lost in the falsehood of the
personality and God is not going to interfere.
Remember this: God never interferes; freedom is total. That is the dignity of man, the
glory of man, and the agony too.
If you were not given freedom you would not be false. No other animal is false, no
animal has personality. And I am not counting pet animals. Because they live with you,
they are destroyed, they start having personalities. Your dogs forget their essence. The
dog may be angry but goes on wagging his tail. This is personality. He knows who is
the boss, and he knows how to buttress the ego of the boss. He has become diplomatic,
he is as much a politician as the people who live in New Delhi; he goes on wagging
his tail.
Have you seen the dog puzzled sometimes? A stranger comes in and the dog does not
know how to behave -- what face to show to the stranger. Ambiguous, he barks -maybe that is the right thing to do -- and still he goes on wagging his tail. He is
watching for the right hints from the boss -- whether the person who has entered the
house is a friend or a foe. If he is a foe he will stop wagging his tail. If he is a friend
he will stop barking at him. He is waiting for a hint, a signal -- how the master
behaves. He has become a shadow of the master, he is no longer a real dog. To live
with human beings is contagious; they destroy.
You even destroy animals if they live with you. You don't allow them their natural
essence, you civilize them just as you have become civilized. You don't allow nature
to have its own way, you don't allow Tao to have its own flow.
Essence is that which you bring into the world. The personality is that which the
world imposes upon the essence. The world is very afraid of the essence because the
essence is always rebellious, the essence is always individualistic. And the world does
not need any individuals, it needs sheep. It does not need rebellious people, it does not
need people like Buddha, Krishna, Lao Tzu, no; these people are dangerous. It wants
people who are obedient -- obedient to the status quo, obedient to the vested interests,
obedient to the organized church, obedient to the state and the stupid politicians.
Society requires obedience, and society requires efficiency. The more mechanical you
are, the more efficient you are. When you are more alive, you cannot be so efficient. A
machine is more efficient than man. The society's effort is to reduce every man into a
machine. And how to reduce a man into a machine? Make him more and more
unconscious, make him more and more robot-like. Let his essence completely
disappear from his consciousness. Let him become perfectly pseudo. Let him be a
husband, let her be a wife; a servant, a boss, this and that, but never let him be his
essential self. Don't allow that because that essential self is not obedient to anybody
except to God. It has no other commitment. Its sole commitment is to the source. It
knows no other masters.
That type of being will be very inconvenient to this so-called society, because this
society is not created to fulfil the needs of human beings, it is created to exploit
human beings. It is not according to you and for your growth; it has no intention to
help you to grow. And it has every intention not to allow you to grow because the
more you grow, the more independent you become. The less you grow, the more
dependent you remain. And a dependent person is reliable because a dependent person
is always afraid. A dependent person always needs somebody to lean on, ALWAYS
needs somebody to lean on. He is childish. He leans on the parents, he leans on the
priests, he leans on the politicians. He cannot stand on his own feet. The society goes
on covering you with many many clothes -- not only physical but psychological too.
The society is very much afraid of physical nakedness, because physical nakedness is
the beginning of psychological nakedness. The society goes into a panic seeing a
naked man because this is the beginning. If he is naked physically, he has taken the
first step. Now who is going to prevent him from becoming psychologically naked?
And the voice that called forth from the burning bush to Moses said, 'Put off your
shoes.' It is a very symbolic thing. 'Put off all your clothes,' it says. 'Put off your
shoes.' Shoes cover your feet. Shoes cover you. 'Be naked on the ground. Be without
shoes.' The shoe represents personality, and nakedness represents essence. 'You are on
holy ground, put off your shoes.'
The moment you encounter your essence, the burning bush within you, you will have
to put off your shoes, you will have to put off all your clothes. You will have to put off
ALL that is hiding your essence. That is revolution, METANOIA. That is the turning
point in a life: the society disappears and you become an individual. And only
individuals can relate with God.
But a great consciousness will be needed.
Gurdjieff once -- in 1933 -- treated Peters to a demonstration of this at the former's
New York apartment in the Henry Hudson Hotel where Peters was convoked.
Peters was a young disciple of Gurdjieff, and Gurdjieff was one of the greatest
Masters the world has ever known -- and not a conventional Master at all, because no
Master can be conventional. Conventionality is the quality of the priest, not of the
Master. The Master is always revolutionary. And this is a beautiful experiment. Listen
attentively.
When he arrived he was asked to wash dishes and prepare vegetables for 'some very
important people' who were coming to dinner. Gurdjieff said he needed Peters to give
him an 'English lesson' consisting of words for all those parts and functions of the
body 'that were not in the dictionary'. By the time Gurdjieff had mastered the
four-letter words and obscene phrases the guests started arriving, who turned out to be
some fifteen 'well-dressed, well-mannered New Yorkers', of which a number were
reporters or journalists.
After staging a late and obsequious entry, the host humbly began responding at table
to the guests' blase questions on his work and reasons for visiting America, when with
a wink to his 'English teacher' he suddenly changed tone and explained that the sad
degeneration of humankind and its transformation into a substance only describable
by a four-letter expletive was particularly striking in their country, whence his coming
to observe this phenomenon in the raw. The cause behind this distressing state of
affairs, he continued, lay in the fact that people -- especially Americans -- never
followed the dictates of intelligence or propriety, but only that of their genital organs.
Then, signalling out one particularly handsome woman, he complimented her on her
attire and make-up, after which he confided that in all honesty between them the real
explanation behind her adornment was an irresistible sexual urge she felt for some
particular person -- graphically spelled out by Gurdjieff with his newly acquired
vocabulary. Before the guests could react, he launched into a discourse on his own
sexual prowess, followed by intimate and detailed descriptions of the sexual mores of
various races and nations.
By the time dinner was over and the guests well plied with 'good old armagnac as
always', they lost their inhibitions and joined in an exchange of obscenities which
soon became more than verbal. Gurdjieff retired with the lady he had insulted, and the
others, by now conditioned to believe that an orgy or something was in the tenor of
the evening, began entangling physically in different rooms of the apartment in
various stages of undress.
Just when the carousel was at a climax, Gurdjieff briskly disengaged himself and
thundered forth orders for the revels to cease, proclaiming that the lesson had been
accomplished, that the guests had already amply verified through their comportment
the soundness of his observations made earlier in the evening -- that thanks to him
they were now partly conscious of their true condition and that he would gladly accept
from them cheques and cash in payment for this 'important lesson'. Peters noted -without surprise, knowing Gurdjieff -- that the take came to 'several thousand dollars'.
When everyone had left, Gurdjieff went into the kitchen to help Peters with the dishes,
asking at the same time how he had enjoyed the evening.
'I was disgusted,' came the reply. Gurdjieff laughed and scrutinized his companion
with a 'piercing look'. 'Is fine feeling you have -- this disgust. But now is necessary
ask yourself one question: with who you disgusted?'
This is the real situation. What you show on the surface is one thing. Those guests
were annoyed, angered by the observation of George Gurdjieff that humanity has
become very degraded, that what you do on the surface is one thing, what you mean
deep inside is another. You may give explanations and you may rationalize, but your
rationalizations are just rationalizations and nothing else. Deep down something else
goes on working in the unconscious. You are not even aware of it.
Psychologists say that when a woman is raped, in the majority of cases, the woman
wanted to be raped -- she had the desire. She was inviting it, she was using certain
gestures; the way she walked, the way she dressed, the way she talked were all
gestures inviting rape. And then one day it happens...
And then she looks surprised, angry, violent, goes to the police, fights in the court.
And if she had looked deep down in her own mind she would have been more
surprised: that it was her own effort, her own desire which had been fulfilled.
There are people who go on living in this double way, not even aware what their real
motives inside are. Watch, and that watching will make you very very alert. Just
watch. What is your real motive? Don't try to convince yourself that this is not so. Just
become a mirror and see your behaviour. Just become a silent watcher of your
behaviour, always alert as to why you are doing a certain thing, from where it is
coming. And then you will see you have a dual being: one is the personality which
says one thing, and the other is your reality which goes on doing just the opposite.
And somehow they both have to manage with each other, hence the conflict, the
friction, and the wastage of energy.
And it happens almost in all cases that you have one desire inside and just the
opposite on the outside. And why the opposite? -- because through the opposite you
are repressing that desire. The person who feels inferior deep inside pretends to be
very superior on the outside. Only inferior people want to be superior. Those who are
really superior don't care a bit. All people who suffer from inferiority complexes
become politicians, because that is the only way to prove that they are very superior.
The person who has the look on his face of 'holier-than-thou' knows that deep inside
just the opposite is the case. He is suffering from guilt, he is suffering deep down
from unworthiness; he knows that he is unholy. Now, the only way to hide it from the
world is to have a mask of holiness. Your so-called saints are not a bit different from
the sinners. The only difference is: sinners are honest and your saints are not honest.
Out of one hundred saints, if you can find even one saint who is really a saint, that
will be more than enough, more than one can expect. Ninety-nine are just pretending.
And I am not saying that they are pretending only to you. The pretension can go so
deep that not only are they deceiving others, they start deceiving themselves. In fact,
to deceive yourself, first you have to deceive others, only then can you believe in it.
When others start believing that you are a saint, only then can you believe in it.
The real saint is not concerned with others at all. He knows who he is. Even if the
whole world says that he is not a saint, that doesn't matter. His understanding is inner.
His encounter is directly with himself. His experience is immediate and existential.
He knows his essence. And to know one's essence is the first step in knowing God, in
becoming immortal, in going beyond death.
Henri Bergson spoke at the beginning of this century. He said, 'The addition to the
body brought by technology calls for a corresponding addition to the soul.'
The modern man looks more soul-less than in any other age, and the reason is: science
and technology have added much to the body. The body has become stronger, lives
longer. The brain has become stronger, has become more knowledgeable. Compared
to the body and the brain -- and the brain is part of the body -- the soul has remained
very very poor. It is almost neglected, ignored. Nobody cares about it. Who thinks
about one's own essence?
Going to the church or to the temple is not going to help. You will have to go within
yourself. You will have to put off your shoes. You will have to go into your naked
essence. Only then will you be able to reconnect yourself with the cosmos. It is from
there that you can be bridged again with reality. Now the sutras.
Master Lu-tsu said: ONLY THE PRIMAL SPIRIT AND THE TRUE NATURE
OVERCOME TIME AND SPACE.
What I have been telling you about essence, Master Lu-tsu calls the primal spirit. The
primal spirit is your essential soul, that which you have brought from God, untaught,
unconditioned -- as you were in your mother's womb. How did you exist in your
mother's womb? Nothing was taught to you, you had no mind, you existed in a state
of no-mind, hence the blissfulness of it.
Psychologists say that because of the experience of the mother's womb, those nine
months, man has been searching for God -- because of that nine months' experience.
The memory haunts him. Those nine months were the most beautiful that you have
known. Maybe you have forgotten consciously, but deep down in the very cells of
your body, in the very fibres of your being, those days are still pulsating. Those days
are still carried by your existence. They may not be conscious in your mind, but they
are there. Just as when in the night you fall into deep sleep, you don't know where you
go and what happens to you, but in the morning you feel the relaxation, the freshness,
the joy. Life has again happened to you. All the dust that you had gathered has
disappeared. You are again fresh, you are rejuvenated.
Your body carries the feeling. Your body is calm and quiet and remembers something.
The remembrance is not in the brain; you don't know what happened exactly -- where
you had gone. Only a Buddha knows where he goes in his deep sleep, because even in
his deep sleep he remains alert. You are not alert even when you are aware, the
so-called awareness. You are not alert when you are in that so-called wakeful state.
Your eyes are open, but your mind goes on weaving and spinning a thousand and one
thoughts. The inner talk continues, the inner noise continues. You see and yet you
don't see and you hear and yet you don't hear, because deep inside there is a wall of
thoughts -- dreams continuously floating in the sky of your consciousness. You are not
alert even when you are awake. The Buddha is alert even when he is fast asleep. Only
he knows where he goes.
Where does he go? He goes to the essence, to the source, to the primal spirit. And
even if for a few moments at night you fall into the primal source, you are rejuvenated.
The man who cannot fall into deep sleep is really in hell. He goes to bed tired,
exhausted, bored with life, and gets up in the morning even more tired, more bored,
more exhausted. His life is hell.
In deep sleep you simply slip back into the primal source of your being. That primal
source is always there; you have not lost it, you have only forgotten it. And that
primal source is beyond all dualities. It is neither the life nor the death that you know,
it is transcendental. It is beyond all kinds of dualities. It is God.
ONLY THE PRIMAL SPIRIT AND THE TRUE NATURE OVERCOME TIME AND
SPACE.
When you are in the primal spirit you are in your true nature. When you are in your
personality you are untrue, you are just a plastic phenomenon. Watch, and you will be
surprised how many things are plastic in you. You smile when there is no smile in the
heart, then it is plastic. You sympathize when there is no sympathy in you, it is plastic.
You show joy when there is no joy in you, it is plastic. You can even cry and weep
without your heart feeling anything, then those tears are plastic. Just watch how many
things are plastic in you. And remember, whatsoever is plastic is not you. God has not
made you a plastic thing. God has given you eternal life. But that eternal life you can
find only when you put off your shoes.
Put off your personality. Drop all PERSONAS all masks. Let all masks disappear. It
will be painful because you have become identified with those masks; you think they
are your faces. It is going to be almost a very painful process of death; and not only
once -- you will have to die many times, because each time a face falls you will find a
death has happened. But again new life will be released in you, fresher, deeper, more
vibrant.
When all the faces disappear and the essence is left alone, you have transcended all
duality, even the duality of time and space. When you enter deep meditation, when
you enter your essential being, there is no space and no time. You cannot say where
you are -- all 'wheres' disappear -- you cannot pinpoint the place. Either you are
nowhere, or you are everywhere: these are the only two possibilities. Both mean the
same.
A few people have chosen to say one is everywhere -- Vedanta has chosen to say that
in deep meditation one is everywhere: AHAM BRAHMASMI, 'I am God.' 'God'
means one who is everywhere, who permeates the whole existence. You become
space itself. 'And I am always, I am eternal.' It means you permeate time. This is one
way of expressing it, the positive way.
Buddhism has chosen the other: the negative way. Buddha says: In deep meditation
you are nowhere. All space has disappeared. And there is no time; you are in a
timeless state. And when there is no time and no space, how can you exist?
Man exists only at the crossing point of time and space. One line of time, another line
of space cross, and at that crossing the ego arises. Take away these two lines and the
point of the ego disappears. It was only a crossing of two lines. It was a fallacious
idea. So Buddha says: There is nobody. In deep meditation, time disappears, space
disappears, and you disappear. All disappears, there is only nothingness, SHUNYA,
zero. This is the negative way of saying the same thing.
Either you can say, 'I am God,' if you choose the positive expression -- which has its
own dangers, its own beauties too -- or you can choose the negative expression,
ANATTA, no-self, nothingness, NIRVANA. It has its own beauties and its dangers
too.
The very idea of nothingness puts people off -- that is the danger. Who wants to be
nothing? In his forty years of ministry again and again Buddha is asked, 'Why should
one try to be nothing? That would be a death, ultimate death.'
And Buddha says, 'Yes, it is an ultimate death. But it is beautiful.'
And the questioners ask, 'But to whom is it beautiful -- because there is nobody?'
And Buddha says, 'There is only beauty, beatitude, and nobody to experience it.'
Naturally the human mind says, 'But then what is the point? If I am not there... And it
is very beautiful, so let it be beautiful, but I am not there, so whether it is beautiful or
not makes no difference to me. Why should I lose myself? It is better to be in a world
which is not so beautiful but where at least I am.'
The goal of nothingness puts people off. That's why Buddhism disappeared from
India. And it learned a lesson: in China it dropped the negative language, in Tibet it
dropped the negative language. Indian Buddhism, the original Buddhism, was
absolutely negative. Under the influence of Buddha thousands were transformed, but
you cannot find a man like Buddha every day. The impact of Buddha was such that
people were even ready to die and become nothing. That was because of Buddha,
otherwise there is no enchantment, no charm in being nothing. But Buddha's
magnetism was such, his charisma was such, that thousands of people were ready to
become nothing. 'If Buddha says it, it must be right.' His word was so important, his
eyes were a witness to it. 'He has disappeared, so let us also disappear. And if he says
so then we can trust.'
But once Buddha disappeared from the earth, Buddhist priests could not convince
people. They had to disappear from India completely. Then they learned a lesson.
Outside India Buddhism started using positive language, started using all that Buddha
had denied. It survived; but it did not really survive as Buddhism, it survived as
Vedanta, it survived as a positive language. And Buddha's greatest contribution was
the negative expression.
The beauty of the negative expression is that it never allows your ego ANY
satisfaction, ANY gratification. That is the danger of the positive language. If you say,
AHAM BRAHMASMI, 'I am God,' ANA'L HAQ, 'I am truth,' the danger is that truth
may become secondary and the 'I' may become primary. Truth may become your
shadow. The emphasis may start concentrating on the word 'I': I am God. If the
emphasis remains on God and the 'I' remains just a shadow to God, it is perfectly good.
But that is very difficult. The 'I' is very cunning, the ego's ways are very subtle. It will
use the opportunity, it will jump upon the idea, it will say, 'Right, I am God and
nobody else is. I am truth and everybody else is a lie.'
But then the whole point is missed. But one thing is certain: time and space disappear.
Either you have to declare, 'I am all' -- the whole space, the whole time -- 'I am
everywhere and "everywhen",' or you have to use the Buddhist expression, 'I am not.
Time is not. Space is not. There is only an absolute silent nothing from eternity to
eternity. A silence, not even a ripple.'
But both statements indicate the same thing. Expressions are different, fingers are
different, but they point to the same moon. That moon is your essence.
Master Lu-tsu said: ONLY THE PRIMAL SPIRIT AND THE TRUE NATURE
OVERCOME TIME AND SPACE.
And unless you overcome time and space you will not overcome death. Death exists
in time, and death exists in space. Unless you overcome time and space you will not
overcome mind and body.
Try to understand.
Body corresponds to space and mind corresponds to time. Mind is a time phenomenon
and body is a space phenomenon. Body exists somewhere and mind exists 'somewhen'.
Think of mind without time and you will not be able to think of it. Mind is either past,
present or future: either memory or imagination or the present facticity.
Mind exists in three tenses. You are listening to me attentively, alert: mind is in the
present. If you are here thinking of other things -- you have read something in the
Bible and it corresponds with me or does not correspond with me -- you have gone
into your imagination or into your memory. You cannot think of mind if time
disappears; time is synonymous with mind.
Man is a miniature cosmos, a miniature universe. All that exists outside on a greater
scale exists on a small scale in man. If you can understand man you will have
understood the whole universe. As above, so below. Man is the atomic constituent of
this whole universe. If one atom is understood you have understood all matter. If one
man is understood, if you can decipher your own mystery, you have deciphered all the
mysteries possible, past, present, future -- all.
And these two things have to be remembered: body is space, mind is time. When you
meditate you disappear from the body, you don't know who you are: man, woman,
ugly, beautiful, black, white; you simply don't know who you are. When you go in,
the body is left far behind. A moment comes when you cannot even locate your body,
and you cannot even feel its presence. You are no more attached to the form; you have
become formless. And the same happens with the mind: you don't know where your
mind is, where that mind has gone. All that noise, that traffic noise that was constantly
inside, becomes distant, distant, distant, and disappears. Suddenly a great silence
explodes in you. In this state of no space and no time, you come to know your essence.
And to know one's essence is to have the first glimpse of Tao.
THE PRIMAL SPIRIT IS BEYOND THE POLAR DIFFERENCES.
All the polar differences disappear: man/woman, summer/winter, hot/cold, love/hate,
positive/negative, time/space, life death; all polar opposites disappear.
THE PRIMAL SPIRIT IS BEYOND THE POLAR DIFFERENCES.
And that's why I insist again and again that you don't get attached to any polarity. You
have been taught to become attached to some polarity. Your so-called religions have
been teaching you: either be worldly or renounce and go to the monasteries. I say
remain in the world and don't be of it, otherwise you will become attached to a
polarity. If you go to the monastery you will be afraid of the market-place. What kind
of attainment is this? If there is fear there is no attainment.
And I know people who have lived in the Himalayas. Then they become afraid. Then
they don't want to come to the world because whatsoever they have been experiencing
in the Himalayas disappears when they come to the market-place. If it disappears in
the market-place it is no attainment. It may have been just the silence of the
Himalayas that you mistook for your silence. It was borrowed. Certainly, the
Himalayas are silent, and if you live in that silence, slowly slowly that silence starts
permeating you. But it is not your music; it is borrowed. Go away from the Himalayas
and it will disappear.
This is creating a fallacy. This is enjoying a reflected glory. This is not your own glory.
Live in the market-place and create a Himalaya in the heart. Become silent in the
noise. Remain a householder and yet be a sannyasin. That's why I emphasize so much
that I don't want my sannyasins to renounce. Nothing has to be renounced. The way of
renunciation is the way of the escapist, and the way of renunciation will make you
attached to a polar phenomenon. That will not give you freedom. Freedom is in
transcendence, and transcendence comes only when you live in the polar opposites
simultaneously, together. So be in the world, but don't let the world be in you.
Love, and yet don't be lost in it. Relate, and yet be alone, utterly alone. Know
perfectly well that all relationship is a game. Play the game and play it as beautifully
as possible and as skilfully as possible. A game is after all a game and has to be
played beautifully. And follow all the rules of the game, because a game cannot exist
without rules. But remember always that it is just a game. Don't become attached to it.
Don't become serious in it. Always allow the sense of humour to remain alive in you.
Remain sincere but non-serious. And then, slowly slowly, you will see that the
polarities are disappearing. Who is worldly, and who is other-worldly? You are both
or neither.
THE PRIMAL SPIRIT IS BEYOND THE POLAR DIFFERENCES. HERE IS THE
PLACE WHENCE HEAVEN AND EARTH DERIVE THEIR BEING. WHEN
STUDENTS UNDERSTAND HOW TO GRASP THE PRIMAL SPIRIT THEY
OVERCOME THE POLAR OPPOSITES OF LIGHT AND DARKNESS AND
TARRY NO LONGER IN THE THREE WORLDS.
The world of heaven, the world of earth, and the world of hell -- the three worlds -they all disappear for the person who knows how to transcend polarities.
I told you just a few moments ago that past, present, future -- these are the three
worlds. Past is hell, because it is dead, it is ghostly: ghosts following you. Present is
the earth: the facticity, the fact, that which is right now and here. And future is heaven:
hopes, aspirations, desires, longings. These are the three worlds, and you have to
move in these three worlds constantly; you are shuttled back and forth. From the past
you jump to the future, from the future you jump to the past. And this goes on. And
the present is so minute that you are not very aware of it. It is sandwiched between the
past and the future, and they are vast. And the present is a very minute, atomic
moment -- so small that you don't even see it. The moment you become aware of it, it
is already past.
To be present to the present one needs to be very attentive, utterly attentive. And that's
why to be present to the present becomes the door to go beyond time. You cannot go
from the past, because the past is so vast -- infinite. You can go on and on, you will
not find the end of it. That's why I say psychoanalysis will not help. It goes into the
past, and it goes on unravelling the past, digging up the past. You can go on...
Psychoanalysis continues for years: three years, seven years, then too it is not
complete. One simply becomes bored with the psychoanalyst, and then changes the
psychoanalyst and goes to somebody else and starts from ABC again.
And one thing I would like to say to you: sooner or later psychoanalysis is bound to
discover that this life is not the end of the past. You can go moving backwards, and
you can come to what Janov calls 'the primal scream'. Primal scream is the ultimate of
psychoanalysis: the first scream of the child when he started breathing -- through it he
started breathing -- the first scream. But once you have reached there you will be
surprised: that is not the beginning either. Then you have to move into the womb.
In the East we have tried it. We have a very very deep-going method called PRATI
PRASAV -- going back, going back. Mahavir used it, Buddha used it -- they went
through the womb. And then again you have to go through death, because before the
womb you died, and then the whole life again... layer upon layer. It is through deep
psychoanalysis that the East became aware of the phenomenon of many lives.
Christianity, Judaism, Islam are not aware of it. They never tried so hard. They have
never tried psychoanalysis.
Freud is the first Jew to have tried it, and of course Christians and Jews and all the
so-called religious people were against him. The fear is that if psychoanalysis goes
deeper, sooner or later the Hindu idea of rebirth will be proved right. That is the fear.
If you go on digging you will find layer upon layer. Where will you end? Thousands
of lives you have lived as man. And we have tried to penetrate all those. But then too
there is no end. One day, suddenly, you see that before this life you were not a man,
you were an elephant or a tiger or a dog. And then you start moving into animal lives.
And after millions of lives, you will suddenly one day discover that before that you
were a bush or a tree, and then a rock.
In India we say you have passed millions of lives. Where can it lead? The analysis of
the past cannot lead anywhere. It can drive you crazy, but it leads nowhere. And so is
the case with the future. Where to stop? How far is far enough? Where to make a
point that 'Now we will not look ahead'? In the East we have tried that too, because
we have worked tremendously on the concept of time. And both are unending:
memory is unending, imagination is unending. Between the two is the present
moment, very tiny, so tiny that you cannot become aware of it if you are not
absolutely alert. It goes so fast, it is so fleeting.
But if you become aware of the present, then a door opens, the door to eternity. It is
from there that mind moves into no-mind. It is from there that personality moves
beyond personality into essence.
You know perfectly well Jesus was crucified. There were two thieves who were
crucified with him: one was on his left side, the other was on his right side. You may
not have ever thought of it as a tremendously significant symbol but Jesus represents
the present moment. One thief is the past, the other thief is the future. And Jesus
represents the present moment -- closest to God, closest to essence. One thief mocked
Jesus -- the past always mocks you, he condemned Jesus -- the past always condemns
you. The other thief asked Jesus about the future, 'What will happen after death? will I
be able to see you in heaven?' One is past, the other is future, and Jesus is just
sandwiched between these two thieves.
And why call them thieves? Past is a thief, future is a thief, because they go on
stealing your present. They ARE thieves. To me this is a parable. I don't know
whether any Christian will agree with me or not, but that is not my business at all. I
don't care whether anybody agrees with me or not.
Jesus is present, herenow, closest to the essence, just ready to die and disappear from
the body and the mind. He hesitates a little bit -- everybody hesitates. When you come
to the present, you will see eternity facing you -- no past, no future, but eternity -- a
totally different dimension.
Past, present, future are horizontal; eternity is vertical. Again, to me, the cross is the
symbol of these two lines crossing. A cross is made of two lines: one horizontal, the
other vertical. This is a representation of time and eternity. Everybody hesitates when
one faces eternity, nowhereness, nothingness, or all-ness. It is so much. One is going
to disappear into it like a drop. And the ocean is so big, one will not be found again.
Even a dewdrop falling into the ocean from a grass leaf hesitates.
Jesus hesitated, and I love this man because he hesitated. His hesitation shows that he
was human. His hesitation shows that he belonged to us -- he was son of man. He
cried to God, 'Have you forsaken me? What are you doing to me? Have you
abandoned me? Are you no more with me? I am disappearing and I don't see your
hands protecting me.' The dewdrop is falling in the ocean. 'Where are you? I am
falling into a deep nothingness. Death has arrived, and I had always hoped that in
death you would be there waiting and you would embrace me, you would take me in
your fold, you would be warm and loving. But where are you? Have you forsaken me?
Have you abandoned me? I don't see you anywhere.'
In fact, there is no God to be seen. God is not a person, God is a positive name for this
absolute nothingness. But Jesus has lived with the Jewish idea of God as a person,
hence this turmoil in his mind, the fear in his mind. He can't see he was waiting to see
the beloved, the Father. He used to call the Father 'ABBA'. He was waiting to find his
father, but there seems to be nobody. The world is finished and beyond is nothing but
a yawning nothingness, an abyss with no bottom.
It is very human. The life of Jesus is very human, and that is the beauty of it. That's
why it has impressed so many people -- his very humanity is touching. But then he
saw the point. He must have looked deep into the eternity, the nothingness. He must
have seen the point: that 'God cannot have a human face, this is his face,' that 'God
cannot have human hands, this nothingness is ready to embrace me, to take me deep
into its heart.' And then he said to God, 'Thy Kingdom come. Thy will be done. So, be
it so. Let it be so. So you are nothingness. I am ready, I trust you. I will trust even
your nothingness.'
Every Christian, every Mohammedan, every Hindu, every Jew -- whosoever has lived
with the idea of God's personality will have to face this, will have to go through this
anxiety period, this anguish. That is the beauty of the Buddha's idea and the Taoist
idea that God is nothingness, another name for nothingness. One who has lived with
that idea of nothingness from the very beginning will not hesitate, he will simply
disappear into it.
THE PRIMAL SPIRIT IS BEYOND THE POLAR DIFFERENCES. HERE IS THE
PLACE WHENCE HEAVEN AND EARTH DERIVE THEIR BEING. WHEN
STUDENTS UNDERSTAND HOW TO GRASP THE PRIMAL SPIRIT THEY
OVERCOME THE POLAR OPPOSITES OF LIGHT AND DARKNESS AND
TARRY NO LONGER IN THE THREE WORLDS. BUT ONLY HE WHO HAS
ENVISIONED HUMAN NATURE'S ORIGINAL FACE IS ABLE TO DO THIS.
Unless you have been able to see your own inner nothingness you will not be able to
do it. First meditate and go into your inner nothingness, then you will be able to enter
into the nothingness of existence itself.
WHEN MEN ARE SET FREE FROM THE WOMB, THE PRIMAL SPIRIT
DWELLS IN THE SQUARE INCH...
This is a Taoist map. Don't get puzzled. There are different maps of human
consciousness. Different maps use different symbols. This is a Taoist map.
Taoists say that after a child is born from the womb, the primal spirit starts dwelling
in the third eye. Between the two eyes, between the two, exists the third, exactly in the
middle -- what the Yoga map calls AJNA CHAKRA, the third-eye centre. That's what
Taoists call the dwelling place of the primal spirit.
... THE PRIMAL SPIRIT DWELLS IN THE SQUARE INCH, BUT THE
CONSCIOUS SPIRIT DWELLS BELOW IN THE HEART -- the ordinary physical
heart. THIS HEART IS DEPENDENT ON THE OUTSIDE WORLD. IF A MAN
DOES NOT EAT FOR ONE DAY EVEN, IT FEELS EXTREMELY
UNCOMFORTABLE. IF IT HEARS SOMETHING TERRIFYING IT THROBS; IF
IT HEARS SOMETHING ENRAGING IT STOPS; IF IT IS FACED WITH DEATH
IT BECOMES SAD; IF IT SEES SOMETHING BEAUTIFUL IT IS DAZZLED.
BUT THE HEAVENLY HEART IN THE HEAD -- that is, in the third-eye centre -WHEN WOULD IT HAVE MOVED IN THE LEAST? DOST THOU ASK: CAN
THE HEAVENLY HEART NOT MOVE? THEN I ANSWER: HOW COULD THE
TRUE THOUGHT IN THE SQUARE INCH MOVE!
This physical heart is constantly dependent on the outside world. It is affected by the
outside world, it is part of the outside world inside you. This is not the true heart.
Taoists say the true heart is in the third eye; it moves not, it is unmoving; it is always
the same. The physical heart is always in chaos, and the spiritual heart in the third eye
is always in order. It is order itself. That's why Hindus have called it AJNA CHAKRA
-- the centre from which orders arise, discipline arises. If something comes from the
third eye it is immediately followed; the whole body follows it, the whole being
follows it. It is the centre from which commandments are issued. But it is fast asleep.
You live from the physical heart. You have not known your spiritual heart yet.
THE LOWER HEART MOVES LIKE A STRONG, POWERFUL COMMANDER
WHO DESPISES THE HEAVENLY RULER BECAUSE OF HIS WEAKNESS...
But the physical heart thinks that the spiritual heart is weak because it moves not. And
because it moves not you remain unaware of it. You only become aware of things
when they move. If something remains absolutely unmoving you become oblivious to
it. And the lower heart thinks itself very strong and thinks the heavenly heart, the
spiritual heart, as being weak, almost dead, because it moves not.
... AND HAS USURPED THE LEADERSHIP IN AFFAIRS OF STATE.
And because of this, the lower heart has become the master of you.
BUT WHEN THE PRIMAL CASTLE CAN BE FORTIFIED AND DEFENDED,
THEN IT IS AS IF A STRONG AND WISE RULER SAT UPON THE THRONE.
But if you start becoming more and more alert and more and more conscious, you will
find that you have fortified the primal castle in the third eye. Whenever you become
aware, you will be surprised: you start functioning from the third eye. Just become a
little bit aware and you will see a little strain on the third eye. Whenever you become
alert, the strain is more on the third eye. Something starts throbbing in the third eye,
something starts pulsating in the third eye.
Once awareness has made the third eye function, once awareness has moved in the
third eye and the third eye starts functioning, becomes alive... That's why Hindus call
it a CHAKRA. CHAKRA means a wheel. The wheel needs energy; once the energy
comes in, the wheel starts moving. By 'movement' is meant that it starts functioning.
Then a great revolution happens in your being: immediately the lower heart bows
down to the higher heart. When the higher comes, the lower always bows down. It
rules only when the higher is not present.
And that is the difference between a real religion and an unreal religion. The unreal
religion says to you, 'Try to control yourself. Do this, don't do that. Control your
senses. Discipline your body.' The real religion says, 'Just go into the third eye centre
and let the spiritual heart function, and all will be controlled, and all will be
disciplined. Let the master arrive, and everything will be settled immediately.'
THE EYES START THE LIGHT CIRCULATING LIKE TWO MINISTERS AT THE
RIGHT AND LEFT WHO SUPPORT THE RULER WITH ALL THEIR MIGHT.
WHEN RULE IN THE CENTRE IS THUS IN ORDER, ALL THOSE REBELLIOUS
HEROES WILL PRESENT THEMSELVES WITH LANCES REVERSED READY
TO TAKE ORDERS.
Just let the master come in, and there is no need to make any effort to create an order
in your life, there is no need to cultivate character. That's why I say don't be worried
about character. Simply put all your energy into being more conscious. Consciousness
is followed by character as you are followed by your shadow. If you try to cultivate a
character, your character will be false, pseudo, and you will become a hypocrite. And
this is not the way to reach to the ultimate.
THE WAY TO THE ELIXIR OF LIFE KNOWS AS SUPREME MAGIC...
This is the supreme magic. Why call it magic? -- because once the higher heart has
started functioning, as if a magical miracle happens... Your senses were never in order,
your mind was always confused. You were always hesitating: to do this or to do that?
to be or not to be? You were in constant tension: where to go? what to choose?
Suddenly, as if somebody has done a miracle, all confusion disappears, clarity arises,
life becomes transparent. You simply do that which has to be done. In fact, once the
heavenly heart has started functioning, all that you do is good; you cannot do wrong -it is impossible.
THE WAY TO THE ELIXIR OF LIFE KNOWS AS SUPREME MAGIC...
And three are the constituents of this supreme magic:
... SEED-WATER, SPIRIT-FIRE, AND THOUGHT-EARTH -- these are Taoist
symbols -- THESE THREE. WHAT IS SEED-WATER? IT IS THE TRUE, ONE
ENERGY: (EROS). SPIRIT-FIRE IS THE LIGHT: (LOGOS). THOUGHT-EARTH
IS INTUITION.
You will have to understand these three.
Seed-water is eros, the energy that you know now as sexual energy, the energy of
passion. Right now it creates only troubles for you and nothing else. Right now it
pretends to be your friend but proves to be your foe. The more you follow it, the more
it takes you into miseries. That's why it is said that love is blind.
Mulla Nasrudin was saying to me, 'Love is blind and marriage is an eye-opener.'
Love is blind because you don't have eyes yet, and a great energy that could have
become a great blessing to you becomes only misery. Eros is your energy. And Freud
is right to seek and search for everything in your eros, in your sexual energy. But he is
wrong because he does not know that this ordinary state of sexual energy is not its
natural state, it is a perverted state.
In its natural state sexual energy rises higher and higher, it takes you upwards not
downwards. In its natural state sexual energy becomes the Golden Flower within you.
In the so-called ordinary, perverted state it simply takes you into new prisons, because
it moves outward and downward. It dissipates you, it only brings your death closer
and closer. If the same energy starts moving upwards, it brings a new life, life in
abundance. It becomes the Elixir of Life.
Just as the mud can become a lotus -- the mud contains the lotus, the seed of it -- so
your sexual energy contains the seed of the Golden Flower. But THE ENERGY has to
move upwards, you cannot move it upwards. There are people who try to make it
move upwards; they become sexual perverts and nothing else. You cannot do it
directly, but you can do it indirectly. Once your third eye, your spiritual heart, starts
functioning, energy starts moving of its own accord. You have created the third eye
and the energy is attracted as if towards a magnet.
Right now your energy moves outwards because you have magnets outside, far
greater than you have inside. You see a beautiful woman and the energy starts moving
outwards; the woman functions as a magnet. When your third eye functions you have
such a strong magnet that nobody can pull you outward. It is just a question of having
a bigger magnet inside than the one which exists outside. Then the energy moves
upwards, inwards.
If you go outwards you will move into the world of duality. If you go inwards you
will move into the world of non-duality; you will become non-polar.
This is exactly the foundation of what I call metapsychology, or the psychology of the
Buddhas. This is pure religion -- not the religion of the rituals but pure religion:
nothing to do with Christianity and Hinduism but something to do with your energy
source.
The second is spirit-fire. It is light, logos; it is conscious mind. Eros moving upwards
takes you beyond conscious and unconscious mind. Logos is conscious mind. It is
psychology, it is science.
Thought-earth is darkness, unconsciousness, intuition. It is parapsychology, art.
Thought-earth is intuition, darkness.
Women live in thought-earth, in the intuitive vision. Women live as unconscious,
illogical beings. Men live in spirit-fire, logos, logic, conscious mind. Artists are
feminine, scientists are masculine. And the seed-water, eros, the one energy, is
non-dual. It takes you beyond art and beyond science. It takes you beyond the
conscious and the unconscious. It takes you beyond man and beyond woman. It takes
you into the non-dual, the transcendental.
But the secret of the magic is to let your heavenly heart function, which exists
between your two eyes. Later on we will go into the methodology of it -- how to help
it function.
The Secret of Secrets, Vol 1
Chapter #4
Chapter title: I Mean Business Here!
14 August 1978 am in Buddha Hall
Archive code:
7808140
ShortTitle:
SOS104
Audio: Yes
Video:
No
Length: 101 mins
The first question:
Question 1
THE RIVER ULTIMATELY REACHES THE SEA. THE BODY GOES AND
THERE REMAINS ONLY EXISTENCE, THE INFINITE. WHAT THEN IS THIS
URGE AND THE PURPOSE OF GETTING THERE NOW? ISN'T IT PUSHING
THE RIVER?
Hamid, the problem is that man is NOT a river, man is very much frozen. There is no
flow in man's being. Man is like ice, not like water.
If man is a river, there is no need to push it, it will reach ultimately to the ocean. It
HAS already reached: in that very flow it has become part of the ocean. To be flowing
is to be oceanic.
But man is not flowing, hence the urge. The ice wants to melt, hence the effort. Once
the ice has melted, then there is no need to push anything, then everything happens of
its own accord.
Man has become a rock. And the reason why man has become a non-flowing rock is
the mind. The body is perfectly flowing, so is the soul. But between the two, the link,
the mind, is frozen ice. Once the mind goes deeper into meditation it starts melting.
That's what meditation is all about: an effort to melt the mind.
You say, 'The river ultimately reaches the sea.'
That's true, but first become a river.
You say, 'The body goes and there remains only existence, the infinite.'
True, but between the body and the soul there is a mind clinging to you, or you
clinging to it. The body goes, but you don't become the infinite because you are not
only surrounded by a body -- that is your physical limitation -- there is psychological
limitation inside it. Through the death of the body, mind will not die, it will take
rebirth. It will move into another womb, because it will carry so many desires which
are to be fulfilled. It will again seek another womb, another body with which to fulfil
those desires. That is the very foundation of the theory of reincarnation.
Mind desires, and if desires are there, then opportunities will arise in which those
desires will be fulfilled. God cooperates with you. If you have desires like a dog, you
will become a dog, you will have the body of a dog. Your mind creates the blueprint,
and then the body follows. The body is a projection of the mind, not vice versa.
Unless mind disappears completely you will be born again and again. Once the mind
is gone, then it is perfectly true, Hamid: the body disappears and you are the infinite.
In fact, if the mind is not there, you are the infinite without the disappearance of the
body, without the death of the body. There is no need to wait for that.
Buddha is infinite even when he is in the body because he knows he is not the body.
Buddha is infinite when he leaves the body. There is no difference for him: living in
the body or leaving the body is the same. You live in a house, but you don't think that
you are the house. Exactly like that, an awakened consciousness lives in the body; it
uses the body just as you use a car. You sit in the car, you drive the car; you know that
you are not the car. You can get out of it any moment. You need not wait for an
accident to happen when the car is destroyed to feel that you are not the car. And if
you don't know it when the car is there and you are in it, how are you going to know it
when the car is not there? Just through the death of the body, you will not know that
you are infinite.
Either you are infinite herenow, or you will never be. Infinity is your nature.
The real problem is not the body. The body is not the culprit as the so-called religions
have been telling you, 'The body is the culprit!' The body is not the culprit at all. The
body is utterly innocent and beautiful. The culprit is the mind, the MIND IS the devil.
You will have to dissolve the mind, hence the urge, hence the purpose of all the
methodologies that have been developed down the ages: Tao, Yoga, Tantra, Zen,
Hassidism.
Become a river and then nothing is needed. That's what THE SECRET OF THE
GOLDEN FLOWER says: Achieve inaction through action, achieve effortlessness
through effort. But first comes the effort, the action. It will melt you, and then the
river starts flowing. In that very flow it has reached the ocean.
The second question:
Question 2
I FIND IT ALMOST IMPOSSIBLE TO SURRENDER TO THE MALE EGO.
INSTEAD I BECOME COMPETITIVE, RESISTANT OR FRIGHTENED. CAN
YOU SAY SOMETHING ABOUT THIS?
Sagarpriya, the ego is neither male nor female. The ego is simply the ego. The one
who becomes resistant to the male ego is the female ego.
You are aware of the male ego, but you are not aware of your own ego. Who is
resistant to surrender? Become more aware of your own ego, and then things will be
easier. Everybody is aware of the ego of the other, but nothing can be done about the
ego of the other. All that can be done is only with yourself.
You say, 'I find it almost impossible to surrender to the male ego.'
Who is this who finds it almost impossible? Find out! And then you will be surprised:
ego is ego; it is neither male nor female. Don't divide it. Egos have no sex, no gender;
it is the same disease. If a woman has cancer, it is cancer. If a man has cancer, it is
cancer. It is not male and female. Exactly like that is the ego: the cancer of the mind.
And who is telling you to surrender to the male ego? Surrender is never to the other.
When two persons fall in love, both surrender to love; nobody surrenders to the other.
If there is an effort from the other that you should surrender to him, avoid him -- this
is not love. Love never demands surrender. Surrender happens naturally in love, there
is no demand for it.
If the man demands surrender from your side, he does not love you. Don't get
entangled into such an unloving affair. He hates you, otherwise why should he
demand surrender? He wants to possess you, he wants to reduce you into a thing. He
wants to use you, exploit you. He thinks of you only as a body, as a mechanism. He
does not respect you as a person, as a presence. This is humiliating, this is not love.
Avoid it.
But surrender happens when there is love. And nobody demands, and nobody
surrenders to the other -- neither the man to the woman, nor the woman to the man.
They both surrender to the god of love. They both surrender to this new opening in
their being. And when both surrender to love there is beauty and there is freedom. You
are not reduced to being a slave. In fact, only in love do you attain dignity, only in
love do you attain to your grandeur. Only in love is your splendour released. This is
the indication of real love: that you become more than you were before, not less, and
you are freer than you ever were. Love gives freedom.
That is the very taste of love. If it is missing, if it is anti-freedom, then avoid it as one
avoids the plague. Don't get into it -- it is something else masquerading as love. But
when love is there, you will find surrender has already happened; it is simultaneous.
The moment you feel love for somebody, the surrender has happened. That is what
love is. Not surrender -- let me repeat again -- to the other, but surrender to an
unknown force that has taken possession of you two. But that is totally different from
you and totally different from the other -- you both have bowed down to an unknown
energy. You become two pillars separate from each other, still supporting the same
roof. You support something that is beyond you, above you, that transcends you, but
you remain separate.
Love makes you more of an individual. It does not efface your individuality, it gives
you individuality, it gives you uniqueness. Love is very respectful.
Sagarpriya, you say, 'I find it almost impossible to surrender to the male ego. Instead I
become competitive, resistant or frightened.'
These are the ways of the ego. The other may have the ego, may not have the ego -- I
don't know about the other, who is that other? -- but one thing is certain: you have a
very subtle ego. That ego becomes competitive. Ego is competitive, intrinsically
competitive. The ego becomes resistant or frightened, and in the fear, in the resistance,
in the struggle, in the competitiveness, love is destroyed.
One thing is certain: you have to become aware of your subtle egoistic approach
towards life. Drop it. At least from your side let it disappear. And then you will be
surprised: maybe the other was not demanding any surrender; it was just your ego that
projected it on the other. If it is so, now you can surrender to love. If it is not so and
the other is still demanding... And you will be able to know rightly only when there is
no resistance in you, when there is no fear in you, no competition in you. Then you
will have clarity, you will have a transparency, you will be able to see through and
through. And immediately you will know whether the other is demanding a surrender
to him, or the demand is coming from something which is beyond you both. If it is
from beyond you both, surrender. If it is coming from the other, avoid it. That other
person is mad; he needs all compassion. Pity him, but don't fall in love, because to fall
in love with an ego-maniac is dangerous; he will destroy you.
This much you owe to yourself.
The third question:
Question 3
YOU SPOKE OF THE SILENCE ONE FINDS IN THE HIMALAYAS -- THAT IT
IS OF THE HIMALAYAS, BORROWED, AND WILL LEAVE WHEN ONE
RETURNS TO THE MARKET-PLACE. IS THIS TRUE OF THE SILENCE I AM
FINDING IN YOUR PRESENCE? IS IT BORROWED? WILL IT DISAPPEAR
WHEN I LEAVE FROM HERE?
Kavita, this place is a market-place. Can you find any other place which is more like
the market? I could have made the ashram somewhere in the Himalayas. I love the
Himalayas. For me it is a great sacrifice not to be in the Himalayas. But for a certain
purpose I have not made my ashram in the Himalayas.
I want to remain part of the market-place. And this ashram is run almost as part of the
market-place. That's why Indians are very annoyed -- they cannot understand. They
have known ashrams for centuries, but this ashram is beyond their comprehension.
They cannot think that you have to pay to listen to a religious discourse. They have
always listened free of charge -- not only free of charge, but after the discourse the
ashram distributes PRASAD too. Many go to listen to the discourses not because of
the discourse but for the PRASAD.
Here you have to pay. What am I doing? I want it to be absolutely a part of the
market-place because I want my sannyasins not to move into the monasteries. They
have to remain in the world. Their meditation should grow in the world, their
meditation should not become escapist. So whatsoever peace you are finding here,
you will be able to retain anywhere you go. There will be no problem, not at all. I
have been managing things in such a way that all that can disturb you anywhere else
is present here. So you need not be afraid.
Meditators have always been afraid of a few things. For example, they have been
afraid of women. Can you find more beautiful women anywhere in India than here?
more alive? Living here, being here, you will become completely oblivious of the fact
of who is a man and who is a woman. How long can you go on persisting in making
the distinction?
The future belongs neither to man nor to woman. The future will be a kind of
androgyny. The distinction between man and woman is going to disappear more and
more.
In the past the distinction was very much created, culture-oriented. A girl had to be
brought up in a different way than a boy -- in an utterly different way. I am not saying
that there is no difference, there is a difference between man and woman, but that
difference is only biological. But the society creates a psychological difference:
'These things are allowed for boys only, because "boys are boys" and these things are
not allowed for girls.' A psychological difference is created from the very beginning.
The difference that you see between men and women in the world is ninety-nine
percent created, nurtured; it is not natural. There is a one percent difference that is
biological; that doesn't matter. Living here you live in such a togetherness that you
will become oblivious of the fact of who is a man and who is a woman.
In the old days, with the old-style sannyas, people had to go away from women to the
caves, to the monasteries. There are Christian monasteries where no woman has ever
entered, has ever been allowed to enter. On Mount Athos there is a monastery -- for
twelve hundred years not a single woman has been allowed to enter. And what to say
of a woman? -- not even a girl of the age of six months, not even a six-month-old girl
has been allowed. Just see the fear. And what kind of people must be living there if
they cannot even allow a six-month-old girl? -- maniacs called monks or monkeys,
but not men. Must be mad. And it is in the monasteries that all kinds of monstrosities
have arisen.
Homosexuality was first born in the monasteries; it is a religious phenomenon. It was
bound to be so. If you force men to live together in a place where no woman is ever
allowed, sooner or later homosexuality will come. Masturbation is a monastic practice,
it came out of monasteries. All kinds of perversions are bound to be there.
There are monasteries for women too -- only women are allowed, no men ever. And
their whole fantasy world consists of men. They cannot get magazineS like
PLAYBOY, but who needs them when you have enough time to fantasize? Their
fantasy is so pornographic that magazines like PLAYBOY are nothing. Their fantasies
are more psychedelic.
These people who have lived in such a monastery, if they are allowed to come back to
the world, naturally their meditation, their prayer, their religion -- all will be
disturbed.
Monks have been very afraid of money. Naturally, if they come into the world, money
has to be tackled. You cannot live in the world without money. And monks have been
so afraid that they will not even touch money. See the fear, the obsession.
Acharya Vinoba Bhave, the chief disciple of Mahatma Gandhi, does not touch money.
But what kind of obsession is this? Touching a ten-rupee note -- how can it harm you?
And if it can harm you, what kind of spirituality is this? Such an impotent spirituality.
Not only that he cannot touch it, but if you bring money in front of him, he closes his
eyes. He cannot even look. His guru, Mahatma Gandhi, used to keep three monkeys -somebody had given him a present. Knowing him, the present was exactly the right
present. One monkey is sitting with both his hands over his eyes, not looking: 'Don't
look at many things in life because it is dangerous.' Another monkey is sitting with his
hands over his ears: 'Don't listen to many things because it is dangerous.' And the third
monkey is sitting with his hands over his mouth: 'Don't say many things because it is
dangerous.'
And the monk has to do all three things together. That's why I say a monk is a monkey
three times over.
Such a person -- who cannot open his eyes, cannot open his ears, cannot open his
mouth -- if he comes into the world, will be in difficulties, naturally. He will find that
all is disturbed, all is destroyed.
And in India the calamity is that these monkeys have become the leaders of this
country -- perverted people, suffering from abnormalities, not natural, not flowing,
not in Tao.
My whole effort here is to create a miniature world where money is absolutely
accepted, where women and men live together in joy, in celebration, without fear,
where all that goes on in the world also continues and, alongside, the meditation
grows. It becomes stronger and stronger because all the challenges are there.
You can go, Kavita, anywhere you like. Nobody can take your peace away. Your
silence is yours! It is not because of me. You have earned it, you have gained it.
And a related question:
Question 4
SO WHAT!
WHAT DO YOU MEAN 'SOCIETY WITH ITS RULES'? WHAT ABOUT THIS
PLACE?
BULLSHIT, OSHO, BULLSHIT. IT'S ALL BULLSHIT!
The question is from Sucheta.
I have not been hard on her yet, hence the question. But from now onwards she will
know. I have been really nice to her, and I am rarely nice to people.
This place has more rules than any other place. Those rules are a device to create a
certain situation in you -- a challenge.
The question has arisen in her mind because she wants to work with children, and I
have said no. I have told her to work somewhere else.
If I go with your likes and dislikes, your choices, I am 'Bhagwan'. In this question she
has not written 'Bhagwan'; otherwise she always writes 'Beloved Bhagwan', 'Beloved
Master'. The question directly starts: 'So what!'
I cannot leave you to yourself, otherwise I will not be of any help. Just BECAUSE
Sucheta wants to work with children I cannot allow her, because I have to take care of
children too. I cannot spoil their life. Sucheta, you are spoiled by your parents, by
your family, by your society. I cannot send you to the children; you are not yet
capable of that. Just because you choose... Anybody can choose anything, but here
things have to go according to me, not according to you. Remember it! If you cannot
be patient enough, then this is not the place for you, then you can leave. Guards are at
every gate to prevent people from coming in, but I have not put any guards there to
prevent people from going out. You can leave immediately.
If you have to be here, you have to be according to me, only then can I be of any help.
I know what is needed . It is not always that which you like which is your need. Your
like comes out of your mind. And your mind has to be destroyed. I cannot listen to
your likes and dislikes. All these rules are made by me. The moment you become a
sannyasin, you give this much authority to me: that I will decide a few things for you.
And if you want to become an ashramite, then you have to give one hundred percent
authority to me -- that is the meaning of becoming an inmate of the ashram.
She wanted to be in the ashram and I have put her outside because she is not yet
capable of it. Just listen to the question and you will see. You will have to earn it. And
this is not the way to earn it, remember.
It is very easy to lose this opportunity that is available to you. Your ego can become a
problem, can create problems for you. Either you have to listen to your ego or you
have to listen to me. You will have to change your whole pattern of thinking. You will
have to change your very language of life; otherwise you will misunderstand.
These rules are for a certain purpose.
Madhuri was living in Lao Tzu House, and suddenly I sent her to live in Jesus House.
She cried, but accepted. And she has come closer to me -- closer than she ever was -in that very acceptance. More love will be showering on her from my side. You can
live physically very close to me, that is one thing... She could have resisted, she could
have written me an angry letter, but she has not done anything, she has not even
uttered a single angry word. She cried, she was sad -- and that is natural -- but no
anger. To live with me in the same house and then to be sent to live in another house
is hard, I know. But she survived the shock, and something immensely valuable has
happened through it. Only later on will she understand that this was a blessing.
It takes time for you to understand things. But I live in a totally different reality, and I
decide from there. And I know you live in a different reality. Misinterpretations are
bound to be there from your side, but try to understand me. Even if you cannot
understand sometimes, silently, patiently do what I say.
It happened. .
The teacher asked the student, 'Do you like Kipling?' The student said, 'I don't know. I
have never kipled.'
Marriage counsellor to wife, 'Do you usually wake up grumpy in the morning?'
Wife, 'No, he gets up before I do.'
'How did you get on with your date last night?' one hippie was asked by an elderly
neighbour.
'Just great,' was the reply. 'I finally persuaded her to say yes.'
'Oh, congratulations! When is the wedding to be?'
'Wedding? What wedding?'
To a hippie it is a different world. Yes does not mean marriage.
'Vicar, you told me I must have Faith, Hope and Charity.'
'That's right.'
'Well. when I tried, they called the police.'
And the last:
'Are you sure that it was a marriage licence you gave me last month?'
'Yes, sir. What's the matter?'
'I thought there might be some mistake, seeing that I have lived a dog's life ever
since.'
Sucheta, if you want to be here, you will have to learn my language, my way of seeing
things, and you have to come with me; otherwise this is not the place for you. Then
don't waste your time here. Then it is better to leave this place soon -- the sooner the
better, because if you don't go with me, one day or other you will have to leave. And
then you will feel very miserable because all those days that you stayed here will look
like a wastage. If you want to be with me, then be with me totally, as totally as
possible, then only something can happen. This happening is difficult because from
your side there are so many hindrances.
The fifth question:
Question 5
I FOUND THE COMMENTS ON RAPE IN YESTERDAY'S DISCOURSE VERY
OFFENSIVE, NAMELY, THAT WOMEN WHO ARE RAPED 'WANTED IT'. THIS
HAS BEEN PROVEN TO HE ABSOLUTELY INCORRECT.
Then why have you not signed the question?
First: I did not say that ALL the women who are raped were desiring it, I said 'in the
majority of cases'. Remember it; it makes a lot of difference. And it is only an
example. There of people who go through a car accident wanted it, were
accident-prone, were hoping somehow that something would happen, were desiring it
deep down, were suicidal.
The mind that you know is not all. Below it there is a greater unconscious mind. In
that unconscious mind you harbour many things of which you are not aware. There
may be a person who is suicidal but not courageous enough to commit suicide. He
will seek ways and means to commit suicide in a vicarious way: a car accident -- he
will not be responsible at all. Nobody will say that he committed suicide. Nobody will
say later on that he was a coward, that he could not face life. It is easier to have a car
accident than to commit suicide.
And, as far as rape is concerned, just look into your unconscious, look into your
dreams. It is very rare to find a woman who has not dreamt of being raped. There is a
certain attraction in it. What is the attraction? The attraction is that you are so
irresistible that a person is ready to commit rape, you are so irresistible that a person
is ready to go to jail for ten years or, if it is a Mohammedan country, is ready to die. If
a rape is committed in a Mohammedan country and the person is caught, death is the
penalty. And you will be surprised: more rapes are committed in Mohammedan
countries than anywhere else.
Maybe the person who commits the rape wants to commit suicide. And this is a
beautiful way to commit suicide. Can you find a better way of committing suicide? -a brave way too. And dying for love... so poetic, so romantic. There is some violence
involved in sex. Even in ordinary sex when no rape is committed, something of rape
is involved. The woman always says no. Why? -- because if she says yes too easily,
then there is no longer that feeling that 'I am needed, utterly needed'. She goes on
saying no, and goes on meaning yes. She goes on saying no: she is provoking the man,
she wants the man to be after her, she wants the man to force her. The very effort to
force her, the very effort to drag her into love-making makes her feel good: she is
'needed'. This is a poor state of mind, but it is how people are.
So first I said 'in the majority of cases'. There are accidents also. You may not be
thinking of rape at all, and a madman comes and rapes you. I am not excluding those
cases, that's why I didn't say 'a hundred percent'. In the majority of cases whatsoever
happens to you -- rape, murder, disease -- is somehow, somewhere, desired by you.
But I am not saying in ALL cases.
Now psychologists are aware that when people are prone to certain diseases... For
example, nearabout the age of forty-two people have heart attacks. Why near the age
of forty-two? -- because that is the time when people start succeeding or have
succeeded. They have the money they always wanted, and now they don't know what
to do. SUCCESS IS there, and they are shocked by success. They have always lived
in the hope that they will have this much money, this woman, this house, this car -and they have it. Now what? Suddenly the heart stops beating. Now what? All
direction seems to be lost. If they don't have the heart attack they will be very
miserable. The heart attack relieves them. Now they can say to the world, 'I have to
rest. The doctors have suggested rest. I cannot do any hard work.'
They cannot rest without an excuse. The heart attack becomes the excuse. If they
simply rest, people will say, 'What are you doing? At the prime of your life, on the last
rung of your SUCCESS, what are you doing? You can have more money. This is the
time, because when you have money more money comes. When you have SUCCESS,
more SUCCESS comes. What are you doing -- 'relaxing', 'retiring'? And they will not
have any excuse. The heart attack is a beautiful excuse. Nobody will say they have
escaped from the world. Nobody will throw the responsibility on them. What can they
do? The whole responsibility goes to the heart attack.
People are not conscious of all that goes on deep inside them.
You say, 'I found the comments on rape in yesterday's discourse very offensive...'
But why are they so offensive? and only to one person? Nobody else has written,
nobody has felt any offense. If you are a lady -- and I hope that you are a lady,
because if you are a gentleman then things will be more complicated, so I trust that
you are a lady -- why are you feeling so offended? You must be carrying the desire
inside you, hence the offense; otherwise there is no offense.
I am a madman, I go on saying things. Why should you be offended? I am not a
scientist, I am not a psychologist, I am nobody. I just like gossipping. Why should you
be offended? I am not a consistent man, I go on contradicting myself. You can just
wait for a few days and I will contradict myself. I will say, 'It has never happened.
Whenever a woman is raped she is not responsible. It is the male ego, male violence.'
Just wait. You have to be patient with me, I contradict myself!
But why are you offended? I must have touched a sore spot in you; something like a
wound must be there. Deep down somewhere in the unconscious you want to be raped.
That's why there is so much anger, so much offense. And you are afraid too -naturally. That's why you have not signed the question.
Always remember to sign it. And if you are very much afraid, you can write
somebody else's name -- but sign it! Then you can enjoy, and the other will be beaten!
No need to be worried about it!
And you say, 'This has been proven to be absolutely incorrect.'
Do you know that nothing is ever proven ABSOLUTELY? Nothing! Man has not
proved anything absolutely. There is no possibility of proving anything absolutely.
New discoveries, new facts, new data... and changes have to be made. Even scientific
discoveries are not absolute, so how can psychological discoveries be absolute?
Psychology is not yet a science, it is still fictitious. At most you can call it... if you
like the word 'scientific', you can call it science fiction. But it has nothing to do with
science yet. It is struggling to be scientific, but I don't think that it ever will be,
because man's mind is like mercury -- you cannot make a science out of it.
And man's mind is not a single phenomenon. There are as many minds as there are
people. All that psychology can hope for is to think about the average mind. But you
never come across 'the average', you always come across the unique. No scientific
explanation is possible about the unique mind.
Psychology is not yet a science, and even science cannot claim absoluteness. What
Newton did is no longer right. It looked so absolute in those days -- it is no longer
right. Do you think what Einstein has done will remain right for long? It cannot; it is
not in the very nature of things. Life is such a mystery that the more you know about
it, the more you will have to create new hypotheses to include the new facts. Have
you known man and woman totally? Have you fathomed the feminine mind so totally
that you know absolutely that it is incorrect? Nothing is absolutely correct, nothing is
absolutely incorrect. All are guesses. ALL are guesses -- one may be a little more
close to the truth, another may not be so close.
But what I said has not to be taken as a general statement. It has to be taken as an
object for meditation. You just meditate over it. I am not concerned about general
truths. I am talking to disciples! You have to look into yourself. If you are a woman
disciple just look into yourself. Is there not somewhere a lurking desire to be raped?
And if it is there, it is better to know about it. It is better to bring it to the conscious
completely, because once something becomes conscious, it disappears. It can exist
only in the unconscious. In the unconscious it is dangerous. If you bring it to the
conscious, it evaporates. It is like pulling a tree out of the earth, bringing its roots to
the light, then the tree dies. And that's exactly what happens: anything that goes on
lurking in the unconscious, in the dark chamber of your soul -- which is nine times
bigger than your conscious mind -- bring it into the conscious mind, bring it into
sunlight and, if it comes there, it withers away.
What I am saying here is meant for you to meditate on. If you felt offended, then this
is very good for you to meditate over. Go into it. Search into yourself, and don't
conclude from the very beginning, don't say, 'This is wrong and has been proved
absolutely wrong.' First meditate, and don't try to prove it wrong or right. Just go with
an open mind into your own being and search for it. And you will be surprised that the
desire is lurking there. It has a kind of charm in it.
One woman went to the priest to confess. She confessed that she had been raped. And
she confessed that she had come to the priest because she enjoyed it. That's why she
was feeling guilty: if she had not enjoyed it, there would be no question of coming to
confess.
Then she came next time and again confessed. And then she came again.
And when she came for the fourth time, the priest said, 'But this is too much! Are you
being raped every week?'
She said, 'No, this is the same rape.'
'But then why do you go on coming?'
She said, 'I enjoy telling it. It feels so good.'
Just go into yourself, and you will find all kinds of desires lurking in you. You will
find something of the sadist: that you want to torture others. You will find something
of the masochist: that you want to torture yourself. You will find all kinds of things in
you because man is vast. And the unconscious is not an ordered place, it is a chaos, it
is a madhouse. But we go on repressing all that. We are so afraid to see. That's why
you felt so offended. I must have touched the right spot in you, hence the offense. It is
not a question of whether it is proved right or wrong.
And I am not interested in that at all. My interest is in making you more and more
meditative, more and more aware of your intrinsic, innermost desires, longings,
perversions, obsessions. If they can be brought to light, they will disappear. And if the
unconscious can be emptied completely, you will become a Buddha.
So don't simply go on arguing with me, because that is a waste of time and energy. Go
in. If you cannot find any desire like that in you, very good. If you find it, that too is
very good -- you can bring it into the light and it will disappear.
The sixth question:
Question 6
I AM GETTING OLD AND LOSING ALL INTEREST IN WOMEN. WHAT
SHOULD I DO?
Sir, go on losing your interest! That's perfectly good. Nothing is wrong in it. And be
perfectly assured that no woman is going to miss you. On the contrary, they will all be
very happy.
But in the West, particularly since Freud opened the Pandora's box the idea has arisen
that you have to remain sexual to the very end, because sex is synonymous with life.
So even if you are seventy or eighty, you have to remain interested in sex. If you lose
interest in sex, that means you are losing interest in life, that means you are no more
needed, that means you are useless now. You can drop dead or go to the parliament,
but you are useless.
This idea that sex and life are synonymous is utterly baseless. Sex and life are
synonymous at a certain stage. In childhood they are not synonymous; in youth they
are synonymous; in old age they are again not synonymous. There are phases. The
child is not interested, the young man is interested -- and the only interest is in sex.
But in the West there is an effort going on to remain young; you should not get old.
People go on befooling themselves in many ways that they are still young. New
panaceas have been found again and again, new kinds of elixirs that will keep you
young forever. And people are so foolish that they are always ready to accept any
nonsense to remain young. Old age is thought to be a kind of disease. To be old means
you are ill -- in the West. That is not right.
Old age has its own beauties, its own treasures, just as youth has its own beauties and
treasures. And certainly the treasures that an old man comes upon are far more
valuable than the treasures of youth. Because the old man has lived his youth, he has
known all that, he has seen that, he has gone through it. He has lived the illusion and
he has known the disillusionment of it all. Now he is wiser than he ever was; he is
becoming innocent again. When sex disappears you attain to a kind of innocence. You
become a child again, and a mature child.
In the East we have a totally different vision of life. In the East we have respected the
old men, not the young, because the old are at the peak -- life's journey reaching to its
goal. In the West the old are just something to be discarded, the old are just to be
thrown on some junkyard. You make houses for the old where you go on piling them
up, or hospitals. Nobody wants anything to do with old people -- as if they were
meaningless, worthless. And they have lived their whole life, and they have learnt
many secrets of life. They can be great teachers -- only they can be teachers.
In the East this has been the traditional way: that the old person should become the
teacher of the young, because he has lived, grown, understood. He can give you a
better direction, with more maturity, with more clarity. Old age is the age to prepare
for death. And that is the greatest preparation because you will be going on the longest
journey -- into the unknown. If you remain interested in sex, it will keep you diverted
from death. That's what is happening in the West.
In the West people have not accepted death yet as part of life. Death is a taboo, just as
sex was a taboo just a hundred years ago. Nobody talked about sex a hundred years
ago. It was impossible to talk about it or to write about it. It was such a taboo that in
the Victorian age ladies used to cover the legs of their chairs too -- because they are
legs, and legs should not be shown.
Freud introduced a great revolution The world is waiting for another Freud to destroy
the greater taboo of death. He destroyed the taboo of sex, and the world is far better
because of it. Freud is one of the greatest benefactors. Another Freud is needed to
destroy the other taboo -- which is greater.
Death has to be accepted. With the acceptance of death you start accepting old age.
And in acceptance there is relaxation. And once you are no more interested in sex,
your whole attention can be focused on death. Remember, sex and death are polar
opposites. If you remain interested in sex, when will you prepare for death? Your
attention will remain focused on sex, and you will die without any preparation.
Meditation is a preparation for death. Now prepare for death. Meditate. You are no
more interested in women -- good. Now become interested in your own self. The
woman is outside you; that is the interest in the other. Or, if you are a woman, then the
man is outside you, and that is interest in the other. Now become interested in yourself.
Now go into the discovery of the self, now go on an inward journey.
You ask, 'I am getting old and losing all interest in women. What should I do?'
Lose interest. Allow it to happen. Don't try to create it unnecessarily. If it is going on
its own, it is beautiful.
I have heard...
Max, aged seventy-six, upon returning to his apartment late one night, was startled to
find a girl of about eighteen ran-sacking the place.
'Young woman, you are a thief!' he said. 'I'm going to call the police.'
'Mister,' she pleaded, 'if I'm arrested again, I'll be sent away for years. Please don't call
the police.'
'I'm sorry, but I have to do it!' Max replied.
'Look,' she cried, 'I'll do anything. I'll give you my body.'
'Okay,' said the senior citizen, 'take off your clothes and get in bed.'
The girl did and Max quickly followed. He tried and tried and tried for about twenty
minutes. Exhausted and in defeat, he finally gave up.
'It's no use,' sighed Max. 'I just can't make it. I'll have to call the police.'
And you ask me what to do...? 'What should I do?'
Do you want to call the police? Enough is enough. Now let that nonsense go. Let that
obsession go. Now turn your energy towards death. Now look into death face to face.
Now encounter death. And to encounter death is the greatest experience in life. And if
you can encounter death, you will come to know that you are deathless. To face death
is the only way to know that you are deathless, that only the body dies, and you never
die. And once you have known it, you are ready, ready for the journey, and when
death comes, you will go laughing and dancing and singing into it.
And a man who can go laughing, dancing, and singing into death, prayerfully,
meditatively, comes to know the greatest orgasm that is in the world. Sexual orgasm is
nothing, because in sexual orgasm only a small, minute part of your life energy leaves
your body, and you feel a great relaxation. In death your whole life energy leaves the
body. No sexual orgasm can be compared with that cosmic orgasm, that total orgasm
that death brings to you.
Don't miss death. Death is going to give you the greatest gift in life, the parting gift.
But only a few people come to it because nobody is ready for it. Death takes you
unawares. And you are so frightened, and you are so concerned with sex that you
cling to life.
Do you know that it almost always happens...? In the East it has been one of the
secrets to know about a man. When a man dies, if he is clinging too much to life and
is still interested in sex, he will die with an erection. That shows that the poor fellow
died without any readiness -- even in death he was full of sex fantasies. It happens
almost always. Unless you have become a great meditator, it is going to happen to you
too that while dying you will fantasize about sex, you will be making love -- at least
in your imagination.
This is no way to die. This is very insulting to death, and insulting to God, and very
insulting to yourself. Let sex disappear -- it is time. Relax into non-sexuality.
Non-sexuality will make you centred. Stop chasing women, and start chasing yourself.
You cannot do both. And get ready. Death may knock you down any moment; one
never knows when it is coming. Prepare. Allow yourself to enjoy meditation as much
as possible. Transform your sexual energy into meditative energy; it is the same
energy, just the direction changes: it no longer flows downward and outward, it starts
flowing inward and upward. And this same energy opens the bud of the Golden
Flower in you. This is the whole secret.
Now you have come naturally to the right point, and you are asking me, 'What should
I do?' You are asking for some recipes to again create the sexuality which is
disappearing. You are asking for some props, you are asking for some help so that you
can go on playing the same foolish game even in your old age.
It is good when you are young, because then you are foolish. It is very rare to become
alert and aware and meditative when you are young. If you can become, you have a
rare genius. But if you cannot become meditative even in old age, then you are just
stupid, utterly stupid.
It is good to fool around when you are young. That foolishness is part of growth; it
helps you. The woman or the man outside becomes the mirror; they reflect you, they
help you to see who you are. Love is very revealing. But finally one has to come to
see oneself within, not in a mirror. Even the mirror has to be dropped. One has to be
alone. And the purity of aloneness is infinite. And the bliss of aloneness is eternal.
Now the moment has come. Just let this interest in women go, and suddenly you will
find another interest arising in you -- it is almost simultaneous -- the interest in
meditation. And then you can have the last gift that life can give to you: a meditative
death, a death in SATORI, in SAMADHI, in ecstasy. And you will know the total
orgasmic experience. That experience is enough; then you will never be coming back
into life, into the body, into this prison.
In the East this has been our goal: how not to be born again, because this whole
process of being born and dying again and again is a boring process; it is utterly futile.
In the final analysis it is just a dream, and not even a nice dream but a nightmare.
My suggestion to you is: you have lived your life, you have seen the pleasures of the
body, you have looked into relationship and you have learned whatsoever was to be
learned from it, now it is time to turn inwards.
The last question:
Question 7
WHAT IS PHILOSOPHY?
I don't know, and I don't think that anybody else knows either.
Philosophy is a useless passion. I am using Jean-Paul Sartre's words, he says 'Man is a
useless passion.' I say man is NOT a useless passion but philosophy is.
You ask me, 'What is philosophy?'
Nobody has ever defined it. It has remained vague. Not that definitions have not been
given to it, millions of definitions have been given; but THE definition is still missing.
Each philosopher gives a definition, and others contradict it. It is a game, enjoying the
gymnastics of logic, it is logic-chopping. It is like chess -- a very intellectual game,
very absorbing -- but there is no conclusion in it; it is non-conclusive. The game
continues from generation to generation. Slowly slowly, out of this game two things
have arisen: one is science, the other is religion. Science is objective, religion is
subjective. Science is experimental, religion is experiential. Philosophy is neither. It is
just hanging in a limbo between the two. And slowly slowly it is disappearing because
that which is objective is being taken by science every day, and that which is
subjective has already been taken by religion. Nothing is left for philosophy. So now
modern philosophy only goes on thinking about language -- language analysis.
The philosophers are asking the most absurd questions because they have lost all the
meaningful questions. Either those questions have been covered by science or by
religion. Philosophy is becoming more and more empty. They cannot find even their
own questions now, so either they take questions from science and they think about
them, or they take questions from religion and they think about them. Their questions
are borrowed. Philosophy is a dying phenomenon. It will not be a surprise that one
day you suddenly come to know that philosophy has died. It is on its deathbed. And
you can go to any university and you can see philosophy on its deathbed.
But why have you asked the question? That is more relevant, more important to think
about.
I am not teaching philosophy here. What I am saying has nothing to do with
philosophy, it is absolutely experimental and experiential. My effort is to create a
scientific religion -- the psychology of the Buddhas. So I am giving you experiments
and I am giving you possibilities to experience something that you have not
experienced yet. This is a lab, a workshop. We are bent upon doing something. I mean
business here! Philosophy is not the concern at all. I am very anti-philosophic and I
avoid philosophy because it is playing with shadows, thoughts, speculation. And you
can go on playing infinitely, AD INFINITUM, AD NAUSEAM; there is no end to it.
One word creates another word, one theory creates another theory, and you can go on
and on and on. In five thousand years much philosophy has existed in the world, and
to no purpose at all.
But there are people who have the philosophic attitude. And if you are one of them,
please drop it; otherwise you and your energy will be lost in a desert.
I will tell you about the four stages of philosophy in four stories.
The first stage of philosophy, the first story:
One of my favourite stories is that of a boy and girl in New England where sleigh
riding is popular during the cold winters. While riding one Sunday afternoon, bundled
up in their blankets, the girl snuggled up to the boy and said, 'Johnny, I'm cold.'
Johnny looked over to her and said, 'I'm cold, too, Jane. Why not tuck in the
blankets?'
So Jane pulled the blankets closer, but pretty soon she moved even closer to Johnny
and said, 'My hands are still cold.'
He didn't pay much attention to her and soon she nudged him with her elbow and said,
'Johnny, did you hear me? My hands are cold... and besides nobody loves me.'
This time he looked over to her and said, 'Jane, remember that God loves you, and
you can always sit on your hands to keep them warm.'
This is the first stage of being philosophic.
The second stage, the second story:
A study group of philosophers had been meeting for years to study the Talmud. One
member of the group had a pernicious habit of sipping a little brandy during the
meeting. One night he drank just a little more than usual and became quite tipsy. His
companions decided to teach him a lesson. While he was in his drunken stupor, they
carried him off to the cemetery and laid him prone among the tombstones.
After a while the philosopher woke up. He looked about him, frightened and aghast.
Then he started to reason, 'Am I alive? Or am I dead? If I'm alive, what could I be
doing here in the graveyard on top of the graves? And if I'm dead, then why do I feel
that I must go to the bathroom immediately?'
This is the second stage of philosophy.
And the third stage, the third story:
Professor Steinberg had been having his lunch in the same Lower East Side restaurant
for twenty years. Every day he left his office at noon, went to the restaurant and
ordered a bowl of chicken soup -- never a change.
But one day the professor called the waiter back after receiving his soup.
'Yes, professor?' enquired the waiter. 'Waiter, please taste the soup.'
'What do you mean, taste the soup? For twenty years you've been eating the same
chicken soup here, every day, yes? Has it ever been any different?'
The professor ignored the waiter's comments. 'Please, taste this soup,' he repeated.
'Professor, what's the matter with you? I know what the chicken soup tastes like.'
'Taste the soup,' the professor demanded.
'All right, all right, I'll taste. Where's the spoon?'
'Aha!' cried the professor.
This is the third stage.
And the fourth stage, the fourth story:
A woman went to a philosophic psychologist for treatment of her delusion that she
was covered with feathers. After a few sessions the philosopher said to her, 'I feel that
we have gotten to the root of this problem through our discussions and analysis, and it
is now behind us. What do you think, Mrs Smith?'
'Oh,' said Mrs Smith, 'I think we have had some wonderful sessions and I do feel that
the problem has been taken care of. But,' she added, 'the only thing that bothers me
now is what I'm going to do with these feathers.'
She raised her hand to her shoulders and began to brush, and the psychologist, the
philosopher, suddenly jumped back.
'Now, hold on just a minute, Mrs Smith, don't brush those feathers onto me.'
This is the fourth stage.
Slowly slowly, philosophy becomes a kind of madness. It leads you into neurosis
because philosophy is a mind phenomenon. Science has taken the body, religion has
taken the soul, only the mind is left for philosophy. And mind is potential madness. If
you go on too much into the mind, you will be moving slowly slowly towards
madness. It is very rare to find a philosopher who is sane. And vice versa is also true:
it is very rare to find a madman who is not a philosopher.
I am not teaching philosophy here, because I am teaching no-mind. And if you
become a no-mind all philosophy disappears: Christian, Hindu, Mohammedan,
Buddhist -- all philosophies disappear; Hegelian, Kantian, Russellian -- all
philosophies disappear. If the mind disappears, where can the philosophy exist? where
can it grow? Mind is the breeding ground of philosophy.
Let the mind disappear. And the beauty is: when there is no mind and nobody to
philosophize and nothing to philosophize about, one comes to know. Philosophy is the
blind man's effort. It is said: Philosophy is a blind man in a dark room on a dark night,
searching for a black cat which is not there...
The Secret of Secrets, Vol 1
Chapter #5
Chapter title: To be One Again
15 August 1978 am in Buddha Hall
Archive code:
7808150
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IN THE BODY IS THE ANIMA. THE ANIMA IS FEMININE (YIN), IT IS THE
SUBSTANCE OF CONSCIOUSNESS.
BUT, BESIDES THIS, THERE IS THE ANIMUS IN WHICH THE SPIRIT
SHELTERS. THE ANIMUS LIVES IN THE EYES: IT SEES, IT DREAMS. BUT
WHOEVER IS IN A DARK AND WITHDRAWN MOOD, AND CHAINED TO HIS
BODILY FORM, IS FETTERED BY THE ANIMA. THEREFORE THE
CONCENTRATION OF THE ANIMUS IS BROUGHT ABOUT BY THE
CIRCULATION OF THE LIGHT, AND IN THIS WAY THE SPIRIT IS
MAINTAINED, THE ANIMA SUBJUGATED. THE METHOD USED BY THE
ANCIENTS FOR ESCAPING FROM THE WORLD CONSISTED IN MELTING
OUT COMPLETELY THE SLAG OF DARKNESS IN ORDER TO RETURN TO
THE PURELY CREATIVE. THIS IS NOTHING MORE THAN A REDUCTION OF
THE ANIMA AND A COMPLETION OF THE ANIMUS. AND THE
CIRCULATION OF THE LIGHT IS THE MAGICAL MEANS OF REDUCING
THE DARK, AND GAINING MASTERY OVER THE ANIMA. IF THIS METHOD
IS FOLLOWED, PLENTY OF SEED-WATER WILL BE PRESENT OF ITSELF;
THE SPIRIT-FIRE WILL BE IGNITED, AND THE THOUGHT-EARTH WILL
SOLIDIFY AND CRYSTALLIZE. AND THUS THE HOLY FRUIT MATURES.
THE ONE NATURE, WHEN IT DESCENDS INTO THE HOUSE OF THE
CREATIVE, DIVIDES INTO ANIMUS AND ANIMA. THE ANIMUS IS IN THE
HEAVENLY HEART. IT IS OF THE NATURE OF LIGHT; IT IS THE POWER OF
LIGHTNESS AND PURITY. IT IS THAT WHICH WE HAVE RECEIVED FROM
THE GREAT EMPTINESS, THAT WHICH IS IDENTICAL INFORM WITH THE
PRIMORDIAL BEGINNING. THE ANIMA PARTAKES OF THE NATURE OF
THE DARK. IT IS THE ENERGY OF THE HEAVY AND THE TURBID; IT IS
BOUND TO THE BODILY FLESHLY HEART. THE ANIMUS LOVES LIFE. THE
ANIMA SEEKS DEATH. ALL SENSUOUS DESIRES AND IMPULSES OF
ANGER ARE EFFECTS OF THE ANIMA. BUT THE PUPIL UNDERSTANDS
HOW TO DISTIL THE DARK ANIMA COMPLETELY SO THAT IT
TRANSFORMS ITSELF INTO PURE LIGHT.
ONCE THE EMPRESS WU asked the Master Fa Tsang if he could possibly give her
a practical and simple demonstration of the principle of cosmic interrelatedness, of the
relationship of the One and many, of God and his creatures, and of the creatures one
to another.
Fa Tsang went to work and appointed one of the palace rooms so that eight large
mirrors stood at the eight points of the compass. Then he placed two more mirrors,
one on the ceiling and one on the floor. A candle was suspended from the ceiling in
the centre of the room.
When the Empress entered, Fa Tsang lit the candle. The Empress cried, 'How
marvelous! How beautiful!'
Fa Tsang pointed at the reflection of the flame in each one of the ten mirrors and said,
'See Your Majesty, this demonstrates the relationship of the One and the many, of God
to each one of his creatures.'
The Empress said, 'Yes, indeed, Master. And what is the relationship of each creature
to the others?'
Fa Tsang answered, 'Just watch, Your Majesty, how each mirror not only reflects the
one flame in the centre, each mirror also reflects the reflections of the flame in all the
other mirrors, until an infinite number of flames fills them all. All these reflections are
mutually identical; in a sense they are interchangeable, in another sense each one
exists individually. This shows the true relationship of each being to its neighbour, to
all that is. Of course, I must point out, Your Majesty,' Fa Tsang went on, 'that this is
only a rough, approximate, and static parable of the real state of affairs in the universe.
For the universe is limitless and in it all is in perpetual multi-dimensional motion.'
Then the Master covered one of the infinite number of reflections of the flame and
showed how each apparently insignificant interference affects the whole organism of
our world.
Kegon expresses this relationship by the formula:
One In All
All In One
One In One
All In All
Then Fa Tsang, in order to conclude his command performance, held up a small
crystal ball and said, 'Now watch, Your Majesty, how all these large mirrors and all
the myriad forms they reflect are mirrored in this little sphere. See, how in the
ultimate reality the infinitely small contains the infinitely large, and the infinitely
large the infinitely small, without obstruction! Oh, if only I could demonstrate to you
the unimpeded mutual interpenetration of time and eternity, of past, present and future.
But alas, this is a dynamic process that must be grasped on a different level...'
Man is not an island; nothing is. All is interrelated, all is interdependent.
Independence -- the very word -- is false, so is dependence. The reality is
interdependence.
Everything is so deeply connected with everything else that nothing can exist apart. If
you can understand a small rose flower in its totality, root and all, you will have
understood the whole cosmos, because the whole cosmos is involved in that small
rose flower. In the smallest leaf of grass all is contained.
But remember, as Fa Tsang said to the Empress: All illustrations, all descriptions are
static, and existence is a dynamic flux. It is a river. Each thing goes on moving into
each other thing. It is impossible to draw lines where one thing ends and another
begins; there are no demarcating lines -- there cannot be. So all distinctions are only
for practical purposes, they have no existential value.
This is the first thing to be understood. This is very fundamental to the Taoist alchemy.
Once this is understood, then the whole alchemy of Taoism becomes comprehensible.
Then the lower can be transformed into the higher, because the lower contains the
higher already. The baser metal can be transformed into gold because nothing is
separate -- the baser contains the gold already. As above, so below; as below, so
above.
The very idea that all is interconnected makes transformation possible. If things are
not interconnected then there is no possibility of any transformation. If the world
consists of the philosopher Liebnitz's monads -- windowless, separate, atomic
individuals, not connecting with each other at all because they are windowless -- then
there is no possibility of any transformation.
Transformation is conceivable only because you are me, I am you; we interpenetrate.
Can you think of yourself as separate even for a single moment? You cannot even
imagine yourself as separate. The flower cannot be separated from the tree; the
moment it is separated it dies. The tree cannot be separated from the earth. The earth
cannot be separated from the sun. The sun cannot be separated from other stars, and
so on and so forth. You separate the leaf, and the leaf dies. You separate the flower,
the flower dies. You separate the tree from the earth, the tree dies. You separate the
earth from the sun, and the earth dies.
Death means separation. Life means no separation. Hence the ego is bound to die
because that is your idea of separation. To think of one's self in terms of ego is the
only cause of death -- because the ego is already dead. You can go on flogging the
dead horse, but for how long? It is going to die; it is already dead, that's why it is
going to die. That which is alive in you cannot die; life is eternal. But life is not yours,
you cannot possess it. Life belongs to all. Life has a vastness, infinity. Death is tiny,
death is individual; life is universal. So when you live, you are part of the universe,
and when you die you die only because you think you are separate.
The more you feel part of the whole, the more life you will have.
Jesus says, 'Come to me and I will give you life abundant.' What is the secret of life
abundant? The secret is: die as the ego, disappear as a separate entity, and the whole
universe and all that it contains is yours. Stop possessing, and all is yours. Possess,
and you are tiny and limited, and you are going to die. The secret of becoming more
alive consists of a single phenomenon of dropping the idea of separation. And
whenever it happens, you feel life becoming aflame in you.
Even if it happens in small measures... If you fall in love with somebody, life is
aflame in you. And it is not that much has happened, just two persons are feeling one.
Learn the lesson from love. Just two persons feeling one, and what joy, and what
ecstasy! Think. If you fall in love with the whole then how much ecstasy and how
much joy is going to happen! That is life abundant, life infinite.
Separate yourself... There are a few people who live so egoistically that they cannot
love; they are the most miserable people in the world. My definition of hell is; to live
in separation is hell. To live in non-separation is heaven. To disappear completely,
utterly into the whole, is MOKSHA, NIRVANA. It is ultimate freedom.
The second thing to be understood: that life is polar. That is also very fundamental to
the Taoist approach. But the polarity is not that of opposition. The polarity means that
the opposites are complementary to each other, they support each other. Life cannot
exist without death, hence death is not the enemy. How can death be the enemy of life
if life cannot exist without it? It has to be the friend. It prepares the ground for life: it
helps life, it provokes life, it challenges life.
Just think. If your body were going to live for eternity, you would not live at all, you
would have an infinity to postpone everything. 'Why love today if there is tomorrow?
And if tomorrow is infinite, then why bother? Why dance today? We will see
tomorrow.' Just imagine. If your bodily life were going to be eternal, your
postponement would become eternal.
You cannot postpone because you are not certain whether there is going to be any
tomorrow or not. Nobody knows whether the next breath will come in or not, hence
only foolish people postpone. The wise man lives, and the wise man lives herenow.
He cannot afford postponement because he knows 'Only this moment is mine, only
this very moment is mine. The next moment may be, may not be. How can I postpone?
How can I say "tomorrow"?'
The foolish man postpones until tomorrow, the wise man lives now. The wise man
knows no other time than now and no other space than here, and the foolish man goes
into things which could have been postponed for eternity -- he lives them right now. If
he is angry, he lives it right now. If he is loving, he says, 'We will see tomorrow.' All
that is stupid he goes on living, and all that is luminous he goes on postponing. The
wise man also postpones, but he only postpones stupid things.
Gurdjieff used to say to his disciples, 'When my grandfather died I was only nine
years old. He called me close to his death-bed and whispered in my ear.' He had
tremendous love for this small boy. He must have seen the potential of the boy. He
whispered in the ears of the boy, 'I have nothing to give to you except a simple piece
of advice, and I don't know whether you will be able to understand it right now or not.
But remember it! Some day you may become capable enough, mature enough to
understand it. Just remember it. And it is simple advice. If you want to do anything
wrong, postpone it for twenty-four hours. And if you want to do something right,
never postpone it even for a single moment. If you want to be angry, violent,
aggressive, postpone it for twenty-four hours. If you want to be loving, sharing, do not
postpone it even for a single moment. Just live it right now, immediately!'
And Gurdjieff used to say to his disciples, 'That simple advice transformed my whole
life.' How can you be angry if you can postpone it for twenty-four hours? It is
impossible. To be so calm and quiet as to postpone it for twenty-four hours is enough
guarantee that you are not going to be angry. And who can be angry if he can
postpone it for twenty-four hours? Twenty-four hours of contemplation, and the whole
absurdity will be plain to you: the whole thing will look ridiculous.
And Gurdjieff was really transformed by this simple message. Sometimes very simple
messages can transform you, but you have to live them.
Life exists because there is death. Death gives intensity to life. Death challenges life,
it provokes you to live, and to live to the maximum, at the optimum, because -- who
knows -- there may be no tomorrow. Death is always provoking you, goading you to
live, and to live totally. Then death is not against life but a friend.
So is the case with all the polarities: the negative and the positive, love and hate,
beauty and ugliness, day and night, summer and winter. And so is the case with man
and woman. Man cannot be without the woman, and the woman cannot be without the
man. They are part of one dialectical process. Between these two poles there is both
attraction and repulsion, because attraction and repulsion cannot be separated. Hence
you feel attracted towards the woman or towards the man and repulsed at the same
time. A part of you wants to be with the woman, a part of you wants to be alone.
You are always hesitating. If you are with the woman or with the man, you start
longing for the freedom to be on your own, to be alone. Suddenly you become very
interested in being alone and free, and you don't know where this desire to be free is
coming from. The woman or the man, the other, is provoking it. The moment you
have left the other, this desire, this longing, this great longing to be alone will
disappear. And then you are surprised, really surprised. When you are alone you
simply feel lonely. You don't feel that joy that you had contemplated, you don't see
any freedom; you simply see loneliness surrounding you. And your whole existence
becomes cold, frozen, dark. Again the desire arises to be with the other. Now you
hanker for love, for togetherness.
This is the problem between man and woman. They are attracted and repulsed
together, simultaneously. They want to come to be together and they want to be
separate and alone, on their own. Hence the constant conflict between man and
woman.
Marriage is a love-hate affair, an attraction-repulsion affair. If the marriage lasts long,
it can only last if there are mini-divorces happening every day -- only then can it last
long. If the man and the woman have decided not to fight, then it is a plastic marriage.
They will be together, they will manage to be together, but they will never be together
in reality; they will never know those moments of unity. They are only pretending.
They are being polite, but not true, not authentic.
Marriage is a kind of intimate enmity. It is an intimate enmity, it is a friendly fight, it
is a war. Yes, between two wars there are peaceful moments too, and they are
beautiful because of the two wars.
Couples go on fighting -- that's how they keep alive the flame of love. Once they fight,
they go away from each other. When they are far away from each other, in their
psychologies, they start hankering for the other, they start missing the other. Then they
start seeking and groping for the other. Then they come close, and very close, because
they have tasted something of loneliness. Now they want to be very close. Once they
have tasted of closeness they want to be separate again.
So don't be worried about it. It is a fundamental phenomenon. You cannot escape it.
The only way to escape is to have a pretend marriage, which is not a true marriage.
'Remain polite to each other.' It is a kind of contract, that 'I need you and you need
me,' that 'I will scratch your back and you scratch my back' -- that's all -- 'because I
need you and you need me. You are my security, I will be your security.' It is a legal
contract but not marriage.
This is the second fundamental to be understood before you can enter into the sutras.
And the third and the most important thing: the third fundamental is that no man is
only man and no woman is only woman. Man is both, woman is both; both are both.
Man contains a woman within him, and so is the case with a woman: the woman
contains a man within her. So it is not only a question of the outside man or outside
woman, it is also an inner phenomenon, because the outer and the inner correspond.
Just as I said 'as below, so above', I can say 'as outer, so inner'.
Your inner reality is also the same as your outer reality: they correspond, they balance.
Now more complexity arises because each man has a woman within him, and he has
to come to terms with her. It is not just a question of having a woman outside that you
love; otherwise things would have been less complicated.
Whenever two persons are in love, there are really four persons -- in each bed there
are four persons. Complexity you can understand. Whenever two persons make love,
there are four persons making love. It is always group sex, because the man has a
woman inside him, and the woman has a man inside her. And it is bound to be so
because each is born out of the marriage of a man and a woman. Something of the
father will be in you -- fifty percent; something of the mother will be in you -- fifty
percent. To each person the father contributes and the mother contributes. You may be
biologically a man -- that simply shows that physically you have the mechanism of
the man -- but deep in your psyche you are neither man nor woman, you are both.
That's why I say if we have to use one word for both man and woman...
Up to now we have been using 'man' -- that means it contains both. It is only because
man has been very dominant in the past. But in the future the pendulum may swing to
the other pole, and that will be far more true, because the word 'man' does not contain
woman, the word 'woman' contains man. It will be better to use 'woman' as a general
word for both.
And so is the case with 'he' and 'she'. 'She' contains 'he', but 'he' does not contain 'she'.
It will be better to use 'she' for both, 'woman' for both. It.will be better to use 'she' for
God than 'he'. But both contain each other. Because of this there is a possibility of
homosexuality -- because of this fundamental duality inside. You may be a man on the
outside, and you may become attuned to your inner woman inside. There is no
problem in it. Your spirit remains free. Inside it can either become identified with the
inner man or it can become identified with the inner woman.
If you are physically a man and you become identified with the woman inside,
homosexuality will be the consequence. It can happen in many ways, it can happen
for many reasons. So homosexuality is possible because of this inner duality.
And now science is even capable of changing your physical sex. That too is possible,
because the Taoist finding has been found to be scientifically true, too. Now just by
changing the hormones and your chemistry a little bit, the man can become a woman
and the woman can become a man -- even physiologically. That simply shows that
you are both. Even the difference in the body is only of emphasis.
And sometimes it happens of its own accord too. It has been found that a woman
becomes a man or a man becomes a woman. The difference must not have been much
-- may have been very very slight: fifty-one percent man, forty-nine percent woman;
the balance is just a little more on the side of being a man. It can change in the course
of life -- new hormones, new food, new climate, new atmosphere, new emotions,
illnesses, or anything, can change the balance and the man can become a woman or
the woman can become a man. And now science knows that it can be done very
easily.
There is every possibility that in future people will change their sex more often,
because if you can live both the polarities in one life, then why not? If you can enjoy
both visions, then why not? You will have more freedom. You have lived as a man for
thirty-five years, and enough is enough. And you would like to see how it is from the
other side, because there is no other way to know how it is from the other side than to
be on that side.
My own observation of thousands of people has been this: that if a person is a man in
this life, in the next life he is born as a woman, and vice versa. And the reason is
simple: he becomes tired of being a man, or becomes tired of being a woman, and
starts hankering deep down for the other pole. And, naturally, in the next life, because
of this great desire to be the other, he is born as the other.
These are the three fundamentals. First: everything is interdependent. Second: life is
polar and the polarities are not opposites but complementaries. And third: that each is
double inside, no one is single.
In India we have the concept of ARDHANARISHWAR. That corresponds to the
Taoist approach. Shiva has been sculpted, painted as both -- half man, half woman.
Half of his body is that of a man and half of his body is that of a woman. When for the
first time those statues were discovered by the West, the West laughed -- it looked so
absurd. What is the point of it? Now they have understood what the point of it is. It is
one of the most fundamental things of life.
So are you, just like Shiva, half-half.
These sutras are concerned with this inner polarity, and unless you transcend this
inner polarity you will not attain to the One, you will remain two. Meditation is a way
to transcend this polarity within you. Meditation takes you away from all dualisms.
In ordinary life you remain dual. And in the space of twenty-four hours you change
many times from one pole to the other. Watch. You may be a man, but sometimes you
are very feminine, very vulnerable. You may be a woman, but sometimes in the
daytime you are very masculine. When the woman is masculine she becomes very
very aggressive -- more aggressive than any man can ever be, because her
aggressiveness is very fresh, unused, just like unused land is very fertile. And so is the
case with man. If a man is tender, he is very tender -- more than the woman, because
that is unused soil, that part of his being has not been used; it is fresh, very alive. So
this strange phenomenon is observed again and again if you become a little watchful.
Woman is generally loving; man is not generally loving. Woman is only sometimes
quarrelsome, but when she is, then she really is. Man is only sometimes loving, but
when he is he really is. Those are the unused parts of their being. When they are used
they have a freshness.
This inner polarity keeps you in a kind of anguish, conflict; without it you cannot
exist. The One remains invisible -- that's why God is invisible. To become visible the
One has to become two. You have to write with white chalk on a blackboard, only
then can those words be seen.
To exist, one needs contrast. That is why in the daytime you cannot see stars, in the
nighttime you can see -- the darkness of the night becomes the background. The stars
are there as much as in the night -- they don't go anywhere, they can't go anywhere;
they are where they are. They don't start coming in the night, they don't start hiding
somewhere in the day. They are where they are, but in the day the contrast is missing.
You cannot see them, they are invisible.
God is invisible. If he wants to become man and woman, he will have to become two,
he will have to become matter and spirit, he will have to become body and soul, he
will have to become this and that. Only the two are visible. The world consists of the
'two'. The world is dual. And the moment you can manage to make this duality
disappear in oneness, you will become invisible. It has great significance, but it is a
metaphor. It does not mean that you cannot see Lao Tzu or you cannot see me. You
are seeing me already, but still you are not seeing me. That part has become invisible.
The polarity has disappeared inside, the duality is no more there. Only the dual can be
seen, the non-dual becomes unseen.
God has to become two, only then the game, the play, is possible. Ancient Indian
scriptures say he felt very lonely. 'He' means God. He felt very lonely. He longed for
the other, that's why he became two. He became man and woman, cow and bull, and
so on and so forth. The whole existence is sexual. By 'sexual' I mean dual. The whole
existence is sexual. Sooner or later science is going to discover that there are planets
which are male and there are planets which are female. It has to be so. Ancient
astrology says so, and I perfectly agree with it -- everything is dual. That's why the
sun is represented as being male and the moon as being female. It is not poetry, it is
fact. Science may not yet have discovered it, but it has to be so. If everything is dual,
then there cannot be any exceptions.
Your attraction for the woman or for the man keeps you in manifestation. Now you
will be able to understand why the great mystics down the ages have been teaching
you how to go beyond sex -- because unless you go beyond sex, you will not go into
God. Unless you go beyond sex, you will never go beyond the two, you will remain
tethered to the duality of the world. The 'world' means God manifest, and 'God' means
the world disappearing into unmanifestation again. That too is a duality: manifestation,
non-manifestation.
In Christian theology things are not so deep, they are very superficial. In Christian
theology you have only creation. What about de-creation? How can there be creation
without de-creation? In the Eastern theology they are both together: SRUSHTI means
creation; PRALAYA means de-creation. There is a moment when God becomes
manifest, and then there is a moment when God becomes unmanifest again -- all
disappears into nothingness, zero follows, just like you, as I told you in the beginning.
You are with your beloved, you become tired, you want to meditate, you want to go to
the Himalayas. God also becomes tired of the world -- naturally so. Then he wants to
go into retirement. Then he disappears into oneness. Dissolution follows. All
disappears. But again, how long can you sit in a Himalayan cave? Even God becomes
tired of it. He starts seeking and searching and creating the other again.
And exactly so it happens in each individual soul. You live life, then you become tired,
then you want to go beyond life. You have lived your body, and you are tired. Now
you want to go beyond the body. And then you can understand my insistence, why I
say don't be afraid of the world and don't escape from the world, because the world is
the very place where renunciation happens. It is one of the poles. That's why I don't
say escape from the woman or the man. If you escape you may remain interested.
Don't escape. Live it through and through. Indulge in the world, and the very
indulgence will become renunciation. Out of that very indulgence you will start
feeling that now it is time to disappear into absolute aloneness. And if you are really
tired, only then can you go into that absolute aloneness.
People are bound to misunderstand me.
In India I am one of the most misunderstood men. They think I am teaching people
indulgence. I am teaching renunciation. They think I am teaching a worldly kind of
sannyas. They don't understand. I am teaching REAL sannyas, because real sannyas
arises only out of worldly experience. Real sannyas is not possible in a cave in the
Himalayas. It will be unreal, imposed, and deep down you will remain worldly and
you will continue to hanker and dream of the world.
Live in the world. Really live in it so you get tired, wearied, finished with it -- so
much so that one day suddenly it loses all meaning for you, and the renunciation has
happened.
To me, the real renunciation happens in the market-place and ONLY in the
market-place.
Now the sutras.
IN THE BODY IS THE ANIMA. THE ANIMA IS FEMININE (YIN), IT IS THE
SUBSTANCE OF CONSCIOUSNESS.
In each being there is anima. 'Anima' means the feminine principle, the passive
principle, the inactive principle, the woman, yin... IT IS THE SUBSTANCE OF
CONSCIOUSNESS. It is not consciousness itself but the substance. Without it
consciousness cannot exist. It is the very matter, it is the house in which
consciousness lives. Without it consciousness cannot live. The woman... and
remember by 'woman' I don't mean just woman, I mean the woman principle. And you
have to remember that continuously, otherwise you will start feeling that these Taoist
people seem to be against woman. They are not. They are not saying anything against
or for, they are simply describing. And they are not saying anything for man or for
woman, they are talking about the principles of womanhood and manhood.
IN THE BODY IS THE ANIMA. THE ANIMA IS FEMININE... IT IS THE
SUBSTANCE OF CONSCIOUSNESS.
That's why women remain too much attached to their bodies -- because of the
feminine principle. Man is not so attached to his body, he is really careless about the
body. If there is no woman around, the man becomes dirty, dusty. The room becomes
unclean, as if he is not aware of all this. You can see whenever you enter a room
whether the man lives alone or if there is a woman in the house. It is so simple. You
can see whether the man is a bachelor or not just by seeing his room. The books have
collected dust for months. He is not careful about the body, the material part of
himself. But the woman is very careful, immensely careful, hence she stands so long
before the mirror.
One day Mulla Nasrudin was catching flies. He caught a few, and he told his wife, 'I
have found two female flies and two male flies.'
The woman said, 'This is surprising. How could you discover the sex of the flies?'
He said, 'Two were sitting on the mirror and two were reading the newspaper!'
It is very simple. The woman is immensely tethered to the body, to the substance, to
the house. If man had been left alone, at the most there would have been tents but not
houses. It is woman who has created the whole civilization, because without houses
there would be no civilization, remember. Without houses there would be no cities,
and civilization grows in cities. The very word 'civilization' comes from 'citizens', the
people who live in the cities. Woman has created the whole civilization. Man would
have remained a vagabond, a wanderer, a traveller, a hunter. He would have continued
to rush from one place to another. You can see it in many ways. There are many
manifestations of it.
The West is more male-oriented, hence you see so many Western tourists moving
around the world. You don't see so many Eastern tourists. The East is very feminine.
The woman remains attached to property: the house, the car, the land, her ornaments,
her clothes. This is because of the principle inside. She is the substance of
consciousness. And remember, without a woman the spirit cannot soar high. Great
poetry is born through man, but the cause is always the woman.
You don't come across great women poets. I have looked into the poetry that women
write. They try hard, but nothing much happens. Madhuri writes great poetry, but it is
not really poetry, Woman cannot write poetry; she can inspire poetry, that is true, and
no great poetry arrives in the world without a woman somewhere in the background.
She inspires: her presence, her love, her caring creates it. She need not write it, the
man will write it. But she is the inspiration, the cause, a very subtle cause. No women
are great painters; not that they don't paint -- particularly in the modern age they do
everything that man has always been doing...
There is a great competition. They think they have to do all the things that man has
been doing. They think it is because of these things that man has become important.
The logic is fallacious. They will only become imitation men, they will lose their own
soul, and they will always remain second-hand. In the world of men, to compete with
men, they will remain secondary. They will never be primary.
That is not the way to compete. If you become like a man, you will never be as
competent as a man -- how can you be? his male principle is behind him. You will
become ugly, you will become rough, you will lose all softness. That's why the Lib.
movement has been one of the most disastrous things that has happened to women.
And the reason is not that their ideology is wrong, its implementation is wrong.
Woman is equal to man, but she is not the SAME as man, and she should not be. She
should follow her own nature, she should listen to her own soul. She has a different
vibe, she has a different function to fulfil in the world, a different destiny. If she
follows man and imitates, she is lost. And the more she is lost, the more she will
become uprooted from her being. The more she becomes false, plastic, synthetic, the
more desperate she will be. That's why the Lib. women are very angry, constantly in a
rage. The rage is that they are feeling frustrated. They are not as they want to be, they
cannot be -- it is against nature; there is no need either.
IN THE BODY IS THE ANIMA. THE ANIMA IS FEMININE, the yin principle, IT
IS THE SUBSTANCE OF CONSCIOUSNESS.
Meditate over the words 'substance of consciousness': the very foundation of
consciousness. It is not consciousness itself but the house where consciousness lives.
BUT, BESIDES THIS, THERE IS THE ANIMUS IN WHICH THE SPIRIT
SHELTERS.
Animus is the male principle, yang.
THE ANIMUS LIVES IN THE EYES: IT SEES, IT DREAMS.
The feminine principle lives in the body, it is very material. That's why women are
always materialistic. Their considerations are very practical, they are very pragmatic.
Mulla Nasrudin was saying to me one day that he never quarrels with his wife.
I asked him, 'How do you manage it? It is almost impossible, or next to impossible.'
He said, 'We have managed it perfectly well for many years. On the first night we
decided a single principle, and we have followed it. And the principle is: she decides
about small things and I decide about big things.'
I asked, 'What do you mean by small things and big things?' He said, 'For example,
what car to purchase, what house to live in, what school the children have to be sent
to, what food has to be eaten, what clothes have to be purchased -- all these small
things she decides.'
And I said, 'What do you decide?'
He said, 'Whether God exists or not, whether there is a hell and heaven or not. All the
great problems -- that is for me. And the principle has worked out perfectly well. She
never interferes in the great things, I never interfere in the small things. I am master of
my own world, she is master of her own world. We never overlap.'
The feminine principle is rooted in matter, rooted in the body. But man dreams.
Man is a dreamer. The male principle is the principle of dreaming. No woman can
understand why people are so interested in going to the moon. It looks so foolish. For
what? What are you going to get there -- some shopping? Better to go to MG Road
than go to the moon. What will you be doing there? For what? And risking your life?
No woman can understand why man wants to climb Everest. What are you going to
get there? It looks so ridiculous. And all women deep inside know that all men are
childish. 'Let them play, let them go and do their things.' She knows perfectly well
that they are interested in foolish things: the football match, cricket -- all nonsense, it
makes no sense. You throw the ball on that side and they throw the ball to your side,
and this goes on and on. What is the point of it?
The woman is practical, down-to-earth. She is earthly. The male principle is like the
sky, and the female principle is like the earth. Man dreams, plans, desires, longs for
unknown things. Man is an adventurer, ready to risk his life for any dream that takes
possession of him.
The man lives in the eyes and the woman lives in the ears, hence the desire in women
to gossip. Such immense joy in gossiping... Just look at two women gossiping -- they
look as if they are in such ecstasy.
I have heard...
Once there was a competition in China, a competition to decide who was the greatest
liar in the country. And many people came and told many lies, but the man who won
the prize was the man who said, 'I saw two women in a park sitting silently on one
bench for half an hour.'
He won the first prize. It is impossible!
Because of the woman, the fall, the original sin happened. The snake must have tried
on Adam first. But Adam is not the ears, he is the eyes; he must have seen the tricky
snake, and he must have said, 'Keep to yourself. Don't bother me. I have my own
dreams.' But the snake persuaded Eve. He must have gossiped with her. This was
gossip: 'What are you doing? And here is the Tree of Knowledge. God has deceived
you. If you eat the fruit of this tree you will become as immortal as God. If you eat the
fruit of this tree you will know all that God knows. You will be omniscient,
omnipotent, omnipresent.'
The woman naturally became curious -- such a practical thing. The snake persuaded
her. The snake was the first salesman. Salesmen don't go to men. They only knock on
the door when the man has gone to the office. The woman has to be persuaded. Only
the woman has ears.
The ears are the passive part of your being, the receptive part. Something can enter
through the ears. The eyes are the aggressive part. You cannot be aggressive with the
ears, remember. But with the eyes you can be aggressive. You can look in such a way
at a person as if your eyes were daggers. You can offend people with your eyes or you
can love people with your eyes. You can reach people with your eyes or you can
become unreachable. Somebody can look into your eyes so vacantly that he becomes
unreachable. Somebody can look into you so absently that he is unreachable. Or
somebody can look with such desire, such passion, such longing, such caring, that his
eyes almost start caressing your body. The eyes are the aggressive parts. They can
project, they can reach.
In India, the person who stares at women offensively is called LUCHCHA. And you
will be surprised: the word LUCHCHA comes from LOCHAN. LOCHAN means
eyes. He is raping with his eyes; his eyes can almost become his genital organs. Eyes
are dangerous.
Ears are very innocent. They only take in. They are feminine.
THE ANIMUS LIVES IN THE EYES: IT SEES, IT DREAMS. BUT WHOEVER IS
IN A DARK AND WITHDRAWN MOOD, AND CHAINED TO HIS BODILY
FORM, IS FETTERED BY THE ANIMA.
But whenever you are in a withdrawn mood, in a mood of passivity, then you are
chained to the body, and you are chained by the anima. It does not matter whether you
are man or woman. If a woman is using her eyes and is trying to see rather than trying
to listen, she becomes animus. If a man is trying to listen, he becomes anima. A
disciple becomes anima -- has to become, because a disciple needs to become all ears
and nothing else.
The Master is all eyes, and the disciple is all ears. The Master has to see and has to
see the deepest in you. He has to penetrate your very core. And the disciple has to
listen, to be attentive, to be available, to allow the Master to reach the very innermost
core of his being.
The disciple becomes feminine. That's why women are the best disciples in the world.
Man finds a little difficulty in becoming a disciple. Even if he becomes, he becomes a
disciple reluctantly. He resists, he fights, he doubts, he creates many many ways to
somehow escape. If he cannot, then helplessly he relaxes -- but helplessly. The
woman jumps joyously. The greatest disciples have been women, and the proportion
has always remained the same. If there are five disciples one will be a man, four will
be women; that has been the proportion. It was so with Mahavir, it was so with
Buddha, it is so with me. It has always been so.
Man thinks women are starry-eyed, hypnotically available, suggestible. These are a
man's condemnations. He thinks that he himself cannot be hypnotized. Women are
very very ready to be hypnotized, he thinks.
In a way he is right and in a way he is wrong too. If the woman comes to the snake,
she will be converted by the snake. If the woman comes to a Buddha she will be
converted by a Buddha. Yes, she is suggestible. It all depends to whom she comes. If a
man listens to the snake, he will not be converted; he will be saved from the snake.
But if he comes to listen to Buddha, he will not be converted there, either. Now he has
missed his salvation.
THEREFORE THE CONCENTRATION OF THE ANIMUS IS BROUGHT ABOUT
BY THE CIRCULATION OF THE LIGHT, AND IN THIS WAY THE SPIRIT IS
MAINTAINED, THE ANIMA SUBJUGATED.
The light has to circulate in the eyes. The eyes are the most lighted part of your being.
Taoists say your eyes are parallel to the sun. If you don't have eyes you cannot see
light, and only the similar can see the similar. Your eyes are condensed light, that's
why you can see light through the eyes. Your ears are condensed sound, that's why
you can hear through the ears.
The anima in everybody, whether man or woman, has to be subjugated. Why? -because it is the form, it is the body, it is matter. The spirit has to be the master, the
spirit has to rise above the body. The spirit has to make the body follow it, not vice
versa. So whether one is a man or a woman doesn't matter. The anima inside has to be
made a follower of the animus because only the animus can search and seek, and if
the woman is coming behind, the animus can go perfectly deeply into reality. If the
poet knows that the woman is behind him, supporting him, his poetry can soar very
high. If the man knows that the woman is always with him, he has great strength; he
can go on any adventure. The moment he feels that the woman is not with him, his
energy is out. Now he has only dreams; but they are impotent -- they have no more
energy, they cannot be realized.
The realizing factor is the woman. The dreaming factor is the man.
In the search for God, or truth, the man has to lead and the woman has to follow.
Inside you the animus has to become the master, and the anima has to become the
disciple -- and, remember again, irrespective of whether you are man or woman.
THE METHOD USED BY THE ANCIENTS FOR ESCAPING FROM THE
WORLD CONSISTED IN MELTING OUT COMPLETELY THE SLAG OF
DARKNESS IN ORDER TO RETURN TO THE PURELY CREATIVE.
Woman is stagnant. Man is dynamic. That's why you see women looking so restful
and men looking so restless. Even when you were a child, just a small child, a baby,
the difference was there. The boy baby is very restless, is trying to grab this, grab that,
trying to reach somewhere; he is a nuisance. And the girl baby is never a nuisance;
she sits silently hugging her doll. She is also a doll. A tremendous restfulness... The
principle of rest is woman and the principle of restlessness is man, hence the
roundness and the beauty of woman and the constant feverish state of man.
But to grow you will need the restless principle in you, because growth means change.
The woman is basically orthodox, the man is basically unconventional. The woman
always supports the status quo, and the man is already ready to go for any stupid
revolution. Anything changing, and he is for it. Whether it is changing for good or bad,
that is not such an important thing -- 'Change is good.' The woman is always for the
old, the established -- whether it is good or bad is not the question -- 'Because it has
always been so, so it has to be so.'
Growth needs the principle of stasis in you to melt. The woman in you is frozen; it has
to be melted so you can become a river. But the river also needs the support of the
banks -- which are static, remember. If the river has no banks it will never reach the
ocean. And if the river is frozen it will never reach the ocean. So the river has to melt,
become water, and still has to take the support of the banks, which are static. The
perfect man is one who has used his dynamism as the river and who has used his
stasis as the banks. This is the perfect balance. Then you have used your animus to
grow, and you have used your anima to make your growth an established fact, not just
a momentary phenomenon.
THIS IS NOTHING MORE THAN A REDUCTION OF THE ANIMA AND A
COMPLETION OF THE ANIMUS.
But ordinarily, men, women -- everybody has become static. Even men are so
orthodox. Christians, Hindus, Mohammedans, Jainas -- even men are so orthodox.
They have fallen victim to their anima, their animus has been subjugated. It has to be
released.
That's my whole effort here: to release your animus from the grip of the anima. Once
the animus is released from the grip of your anima, then we can use the anima too; but
not before. Hence my insistence on dynamic methods of meditation. Only once in a
while do I suggest that people go to Zazen, Vipassana -- only when I see that their
animus is flowing. Now they can use their anima.
Vipassana, Zazen are anima methods, feminine methods. Sufi dancing, Dynamic
Meditation, Nataraj, they are animus methods. First you have to become a river, only
then can your banks be used as supports.
AND THE CIRCULATION OF THE LIGHT IS THE MAGICAL MEANS OF
REDUCING THE DARK, AND GAINING MASTERY OVER THE ANIMA. IF
THIS METHOD IS FOLLOWED, PLENTY OF SEED-WATER WILL BE
PRESENT OF ITSELF; THE SPIRIT-FIRE WILL BE IGNITED, AND THE
THOUGHT-EARTH WILL SOLIDIFY AND CRYSTALLIZE. AND THUS THE
HOLY FRUIT MATURES.
The holy fruit is neither male nor female. The holy fruit matures only in wholeness.
When your anima and animus are supporting each other like the two wings of a bird,
then eros is released, logos is released, intuition is released. Then you start flying into
the sky and yet you remain rooted in the earth.
For a tree to go high in the sky it will need deep roots in the earth. The earth is anima,
the sky is animus. And the higher the tree goes into the sky, the deeper it has to go
into the earth -- in the same proportion.
THE ONE NATURE, WHEN IT DESCENDS INTO THE HOUSE OF THE
CREATIVE, DIVIDES INTO ANIMUS AND ANIMA.
God is one, but when he becomes creative, he divides himself into two: animus and
anima. Without it there is no possibility of manifestation. Without it there will be no
dialectics. God divides himself into thesis and antithesis, because only through thesis
and antithesis -- the challenge, the conflict, the struggle. And through the struggle, the
friction, energy is created.
It is just like when you strike two stones and fire comes up. It is just like when you
clap two hands and sound is created. Zen Masters say, 'Find the sound of one hand
clapping.' What do they mean? They mean go beyond the two so you can find the One.
But that One is the unmanifest God. That One is the very source from which we have
come. And we can reach the source only when our two-ness has disappeared.
Now this two-ness has to be used in such a way that the thesis and antithesis become
synthesis. That is the whole art of life, and that's what I am teaching you. My
sannyasin has to be a synthesis of man and woman, of day and night, of world and
renunciation, of matter and spirit, of earth and sky.
THE ANIMUS IS IN THE HEAVENLY HEART, in the third eye. IT IS OF THE
NATURE OF LIGHT; IT IS THE POWER OF LIGHTNESS AND PURITY. IT IS
THAT WHICH WE HAVE RECEIVED FROM THE GREAT EMPTINESS, the great
sky, THAT WHICH IS IDENTICAL IN FORM WITH THE PRIMORDIAL
BEGINNING. THE ANIMA PARTAKES OF THE NATURE OF THE DARK.
Hence the mystery of the woman. No man has ever been able to unravel the mystery.
Only if one has gone beyond both, only if one has become a Buddha can one know
the mystery of both man and woman. Otherwise no man has ever been able to plumb
the depths of a woman; the woman remains mysterious, dark, a dark night. You cannot
see clearly -- you can at most grope. You can never be logically clear about the
woman. She never follows logic, her path is very zig-zag. She jumps to conclusions
directly without ever going through the process. The man goes step by step through
the process; he is methodical.
The woman is a poet in the sense that she is intuitive. She may not create poetry -- she
is a poet without creating any poetry. Her life is her poetry. And it is as dark as poetry:
mysterious, vague, ambiguous. Nothing is clear, nothing can ever be clear: the woman
cannot be demystified. She remains always a question mark.
Man is clear like light. Hence man looks shallow, woman looks deep. Hence man
seems to be completely on the surface. You can know about him; if you know about
him you can predict him. But you can never predict a woman; she remains
unpredictable, hence the darkness. These are metaphors.
IT IS THE ENERGY OF THE HEAVY AND TURBID...
And the woman, the principle of the feminine, keeps you tethered to the earth; it is
gravitation.
... IT IS BOUND TO THE BODILY FLESHLY HEART. THE ANIMUS LOVES
LIFE. THE ANIMA SEEKS DEATH.
The woman is more like death. Don't feel offended, this is just a description. If the
words 'anima' and 'animus', 'man' and 'woman' create some trouble in you, you can
replace them with x and Y. But that is what THE SECRET OF THE GOLDEN
FLOWER IS doing. These are just metaphors. To make them anthropomorphic helps
them to be understood more clearly.
Man is interested in life, woman is interested in security. Man is interested in love,
woman is interested in safety. Man is interested in adventure, woman is interested in
comfort, convenience. Woman is death. By 'death' there is no condemnation meant or
supposed, just that the quality of death is security. You are secure only when you are
dead. You are secure only when you are not, then nothing can happen to you anymore.
But man wants to seek and search, to risk. That's why the husband goes on looking for
other women, and the woman goes on watching the husband. She cannot conceive
why he is still interested in other women -- 'I am here!' But the male principle is
always interested in something new, in the sensational, the new thrill. And sometimes
it happens that his own wife may be a beauty, and he may start fooling around with an
ugly woman. Nobody can see the point of it -- what is happening. 'You have such a
beautiful woman, and what are you doing?'
But you don't understand the male principle. The male principle is basically
polygamous, and the feminine is monogamous. She wants to settle. She is more
interested in marriage than in love. She is interested in love only to get married. And
man gets married only because he is interested in love.
There is an ancient saying that the world would be immensely joyful if every man
remained unmarried and every woman was married. But how can it be done? It is
impossible.
THE ANIMUS LOVES LIFE. THE ANIMA SEEKS DEATH. ALL SENSUOUS
DESIRES AND IMPULSES OF ANGER ARE EFFECTS OF THE ANIMA. BUT
THE PUPIL UNDERSTANDS HOW TO DISTIL THE DARK ANIMA
COMPLETELY SO THAT IT TRANSFORMS ITSELF INTO PURE LIGHT.
But the alchemy consists in understanding these two principles in each of you, man or
woman; and in transforming the anima, the dark part in you, into the light part; in
helping the dark part to move, in helping the dark part help the light part and not to
fight with it.
If your anima can help your animus that is real marriage, the inner marriage. Then
you start becoming integrated, then your light is no more shallow, it has the depth of
darkness. And your darkness is no more dark, it has the light of lightness. Then anima
and animus melt into each other. And when they melt utterly, the world has
disappeared, you are again one. And to be one is to know God. To remain two is to
remain in the world. And the secret, the experiment, has to happen within you, it has
nothing to do with the outside world.
Inside you these two principles are constantly in fight. Call them life/death,
darkness/light, man/woman, x/z -- whatsoever you will -- but these two principles are
there, continuously in fight. And that is your anguish, your misery, your hell. Let them
become friends. Let your energy circulate in them, not against each other, let them
come closer to each other. Let there be an inner orgasm, an inner intercourse between
the woman and the man. That's what in Tantra is called YUGA-NADDHA, the
meeting of the man and woman within you. That is real Tantra. The meeting of the
man and woman on the outside is just an introduction.
Sudha leads the Tantra Group. That is just an introduction. The real Tantra has yet to
begin. She is just preparing you. The real Tantra Group will soon start when I see that
now you are ready to go in and meet THERE with your inner woman and inner man.
When I see your outer interest is no longer so strong as to keep you out, is no longer
so binding on you -- the chain is broken -- then the real Tantra Group will start. I am
waiting for the new commune to happen, because the new Tantra Group will need a
totally different kind of climate, a totally different kind of atmosphere. This is the
greatest experiment that a man can go through. And this experiment releases in you
cosmic ecstasy, total orgasm.
The Secret of Secrets, Vol 1
Chapter #6
Chapter title: Born with Joy
16 August 1978 am in Buddha Hall
Archive code:
7808160
ShortTitle:
SOS106
Audio: Yes
Video:
No
Length: 0 mins
The first question:
Question 1
WHY IS IT SO DIFFICULT TO ENJOY?
Rani, it is difficult to enjoy because you will have to disappear. Joy is possible if you
are not. You and joy cannot coexist: when joy is there you are absent, when you are
there joy is absent. They are like light and darkness -- they can't exist together in the
same place.
Hence, to enjoy is difficult; it is not easy because to die is difficult, to die is not easy.
And only those who know how to die moment-to-moment know how to enjoy. The
more capable you are of dying the deeper will be your joy. Intense will be the flame of
it, and great will be the flowering of it.
It is also difficult to enjoy, Rani, because you have so many investments in remaining
miserable. Unless you see it, you can go on trying to enjoy, but you will never enjoy.
Those investments in misery have to be dropped. And from their very childhood
everybody learns that misery pays. If you are miserable the parents are more loving. If
you are ill the parents are more caring. If you are happy, healthy, nobody cares, you
don't get attention. And attention is food for the ego. Without the attention the ego
cannot live; it is its very breath. Just as the body needs oxygen, the ego needs
attention.
Whenever you are healthy, happy, the parents don't pay any attention to you; there is
no need. But when you are ill, miserable, crying, weeping, the whole family becomes
attentive to your needs, as if you have created a kind of emergency. They drop all
their work: the mother runs from the kitchen, the father drops his newspaper, and
everybody is focused on you. It gives you great ego-fulfilment. And slowly slowly
you learn the way of the ego: remain miserable and people will pay attention to you,
remain miserable and they will sympathize with you. And whenever you are enjoying
nobody sympathizes with you. That's why people pay so much respect to ascetic
people. Somebody is fasting and people say, 'Look, what a great saint!' He is simply
being miserable.
If you are feasting, nobody is going to sympathize with you, but fast, and people
sympathize. If you are in love with a woman, who is going to sympathize with you?
On the contrary, people will be jealous. You are a competitor. They wanted the same
woman themselves. You are an enemy.
Renounce sex, become celibate, move to a cave, and people will come from faraway
places to pay their respects: 'Here is a great ascetic!' And you are simply being
miserable. But misery pays: misery can make you a MAHATMA. That has been the
whole history of humanity: misery has always paid, you have respected miserable
people. And if the misery is self-inflicted, of course, you gain more respect; it is
voluntary.
Mahatma Gandhi became such a great name in the world because he was voluntarily
miserable, inflicting misery upon himself How can you not be attentive to him? If he
had been enjoying and living a total life, a whole and healthy life, you would have
been jealous, you would have been antagonistic.
See these tricks and strategies of the mind and you will be able to drop them. Don't
ask for attention, otherwise you will remain miserable. Attention can only be given
when you are miserable; that is part of a natural mechanism.
It happens in your body, too. If you have a headache, your attention moves to the head;
you forget the whole body. If you have a pain in the leg, then the whole attention
moves towards the leg, you forget the whole body; then the leg becomes very
important. It is good that legs and heads and hands are not politicians, otherwise they
would constantly be in pain, they would remain constantly in pain. It is good that they
don't have any egos. If the leg had some kind of ego, then the leg would continuously
create trouble, because only when there is trouble do you pay attention: you massage
the leg, you take care of it.
This is the inner mechanism, too: attention goes to the part which is in pain. And this
is the mechanism of the family, of the society, of the world at large. Once you have
learned the trick it becomes unconscious, it becomes autonomous; you simply go on
using the trick. The husband comes home and the wife immediately starts being
miserable. This I have watched.
I used to stay in many families when I was travelling around this country. The wife is
laughing and is happy, and suddenly the husband comes -- and I am watching -- and
her face changes. Not that she is doing it, no; it is not needed to be done anymore, it is
automatic. Seeing the husband coming, seeing the key move in the hole, suddenly an
automatic change happens in her, her face becomes miserable because the husband
will only pay attention to her if she is in misery, otherwise not.
This mechanism has to be made conscious. Watch out for it, otherwise it will destroy
all possibilities of joy in life. It has destroyed -- millions of people live in misery and
hell because they hanker for attention. It is stupid to hanker for attention; it does not
give you anything, it only strengthens the ego, which is not you. It is not your essence,
it is only your personality, your pseudo self. It goes on nourishing the pseudo self, and
the essential self goes on starving.
The essential self need not have any attention. The essential self can live without any
attention because it is not dependent on anybody else. And the essential self is capable
of rejoicing in its aloneness. It does not even need the other, so what to say about
attention? It does not even need the other. Its real bliss is inner, it does not come from
the outside, it does not depend on any condition; it is unconditional. It is a
spontaneous, inner, intrinsic phenomenon.
Watch and see how you are profiting from misery, and then you will know why it is so
difficult to enjoy. Stop these investments in misery, arid the joy will flow again.
We are born with joy. Joy is our very being. It does not need anything to be joyous.
One can simply be joyous sitting by oneself. Joy is natural, misery is unnatural. But
misery is profitable, and joy is purposeless -- it will not bring you any profit.
So one has to decide. If you want to be joyous, you have to be a nobody. This is the
decision. If you want to be joyous, you will have to be a nobody because you will not
get any attention. On the contrary, people will feel jealous, people will be antagonistic
to you, people will not like you. People will like you only if you are in misery, then
they will sympathize. In sympathy your ego is fulfilled and their ego is fulfilled.
Whenever they sympathize with somebody, they are higher and you are lower. They
have the upper hand. They are enjoying the trip of sympathy.
Sympathy is violent. They are seeing the fact that you are miserable and they are not.
They are in a position to sympathize, and you are in a position to be sympathized with.
Their ego is fulfilled and your ego is fulfilled because 'Look,' you say to yourself,
'how important you are. Everybody is sympathizing with you.'
So ego fulfils from both sides. It is profitable. Nobody loses. When you are joyous,
rejoicing, dancing, singing, just being happy for no reason at all, your ego will
disappear because it will not get attention. And others will not feel good because you
are not giving them an opportunity to fulfil their egos.
That's the reason why people were against Jesus and against Buddha, and why they
are against me. They would like me also to be fasting, living under a tree like a beggar,
then they would be very happy. They would come in thousands, they would worship
me. But if I live in my own way -- and my way is the way of the feast, my way is the
way of festivity -- then they are shocked. They are perfectly happy if somebody
leaves the palace and becomes a beggar. They are perfectly happy -- they love the
man. But if a beggar moves into the palace, they will all be against him. They will not
like the idea at all.
Just watch. You also do such things.
If a man is Lying on a bed of thorns, immediately you prostrate yourself as if he were
doing something great, as if he were bringing some bliss to humanity. He is just being
a masochist, but you love, you respect him. Your respect seems to be morbid. Your
respect seems to be ill, sick. And because of your respect he is Lying there on the
thorns: he wants your attention and this is the most simple way to get your attention
and your respect. His ego is fulfilled. He is ready to lie down on those thorns and
suffer.
This thing is happening on a smaller scale or a bigger scale everywhere. Beware of it;
it is a very ancient trap. And then you can enjoy, there is nothing else but to enjoy. If
you are ready to become a nobody, if you are not in need of others' attention, there is
no problem at all. You can enjoy, small things you can enjoy. Very small things can
give you the greatest joy possible.
Just see Jesus with his friends, eating, drinking... People could not tolerate it. They
would have loved him if he had been an ascetic; but he was not.
One day he came into a town and Mary Magdalene came to see this man for the first
time. And she fell in love with this man. This man was worth loving. How can you
avoid it? How can you manage not to fall in love with such a man? She brought very
precious perfume and poured it on Jesus' feet, and washed Jesus' feet with that
precious perfume. And she was crying with joy. And Judas said to Jesus, 'This is
wrong. You should have prevented the woman. The perfume was very precious. It
could have been sold. It could have fed a few poor people in the town.'
Now with whom are you going to agree? -- with Judas or with Jesus? If you are
honest you will agree with Judas. If you are honest with yourself you will agree with
Judas. He seems to be the beginning of socialism, communism, Gandhism. He seems
to be very logically right. He was the most intellectual disciple of Jesus, the only
educated disciple of Jesus, and his logic is flawless.
But what did Jesus say? Jesus said something absurd. He said, 'You can feed the poor
when I am gone. The poor will always be there, you need not worry. But while I am
here, rejoice.'
Do you agree with Jesus? If you agree, you can be joyous. If you don't agree, you are
going to remain miserable. 'But look!' your head will say, 'Judas seems to be right.'
Jesus seems to be utterly absurd. What is he saying? 'The poor will always be there,
but right now you are with the bridegroom. Enjoy! Celebrate! ' This is celebration.
Now if the people were against Jesus it seems to be absolutely fitting with our
so-called intellect. Jesus says, 'I cannot prevent the woman because she is in such joy.
I cannot destroy her joy. Look at her tears, look at her being. She is in such a festive
mood. This is just symbolic. This pouring of the precious perfume on my feet is just
symbolic that she is utterly happy. She is celebrating. I cannot stop anybody from
celebrating.' Then, if you agree with Jesus, you can be joyous.
So it depends on you, Rani, whether you agree with Judas or you agree with Jesus.
The second question:
Question 2
YOU HAD NO MASTER. NO BUDDHA HAS A MASTER. SOMETIMES I
THINK THAT CHOOSING A MASTER MEANS TO PREVENT ONE'S OWN
ENLIGHTENMENT. I MEAN, THE NEED OF ONE'S OWN WAY, THE
IMPOSSIBILITY OF GUIDANCE. PLEASE TELL ME WHAT YOU MEAN.
Andreas, I never asked anybody any such question. To ask the question is to search
for guidance, is to seek for guidance. A question is always a need for an answer from
somebody else. If you have questions to ask, you will have to choose a Master.
A Master is one who is ready to answer you. A disciple is one who is not only asking
from curiosity but is ready to stake his whole being on his questioning, is ready to
transform his life according to the answer given. If you really ask the question you
have already become a disciple. That is the meaning of being a disciple: to ask.
Jesus says, 'Ask, and it shall be given to you. Knock, and the door shall be opened
unto you. Seek, and ye shall find.'
'Ask, and it shall be given unto you...' Asking is the beginning of disciplehood. And
unless you are a disciple, the Master will not take much note of you, because many
come just as curiosity seekers -- out of curiosity but not really ready to inquire.
Inquiry needs commitment, inquiry needs involvement, inquiry is risky, dangerous. It
is not only intellectual, it is existential. So if you really want to ask, remember, let me
make you alert, you are already becoming a disciple. And if you think that to choose a
Master is to prevent one's enlightenment, please don't ask questions.
And I was surprised, because Andreas has asked at least seven questions today. The
largest number of questions is from him.
Secondly, you say, 'You had no Master.'
That is true, I had no Master. That does not mean that I was not a disciple. I accepted
the whole existence as my Master. It needs more courage to accept the whole
existence as your Master. If you cannot accept even a single man as your Master, how
can you accept the whole existence as your Master -- the trees and rocks and the rivers
and the clouds? If you cannot love a single human being, how can you love the whole?
It is true I had no Master, but that does not mean that I was not a disciple. My
disciplehood was a greater involvement than your disciplehood is. I trusted the clouds
-- which is very difficult. I trusted the trees -- which is almost impossible. I trusted
existence as such. If that is possible then you need not have any Master in particular,
because then everything is your Master.
When a great Sufi mystic, Hassan, was dying, somebody asked, 'Hassan, who was
your Master?'
He said, 'Now it is too late to ask. Time is short, I am dying.' But the inquirer asked,
'You can simply say the name. You are still alive, you are still breathing and talking,
you can simply tell me the name.'
He said, 'It will be difficult because I had thousands of Masters. If I just relate their
names it will take months and years. It is too late. But three Masters I will certainly
tell you about.
'One was a thief. Once I got lost in the desert, and when I reached the village it was
very late. Half the night was already gone; shops were closed, caravanserais were
closed. There was not a single human being on the roads. I searched for somebody to
inquire of. I found one man who was trying to make a hole in the wall of a house. I
asked him where I could stay, and he said, "I am a thief, and you look like a Sufi
mystic to me."' His robe, his aura. 'And the thief said, "Right now it will be very
difficult to find any place to stay, but you can come to my home. You can stay with
me -- if you can stay with a thief." '
Hassan said, 'I hesitated a little bit. Then I remembered. If the thief is not afraid of a
Sufi, then why should the Sufi be afraid of a thief? In fact, he should be afraid of me.
So I said, "Yes, I will come." And I went, and I stayed with the thief. And the man was
so lovely, so beautiful, I stayed for one month! And each night he would say to me,
"Now I am going to my work. You rest, you pray, you do your work." And when he
would come back I would ask, "Could you get anything?" He said, "Not tonight. But
tomorrow I will try again." And he was never in a state of hopelessness.
'For one month continuously he came empty-handed, but he was always happy. And
he said, "I will try tomorrow. God willing, tomorrow it is going to happen. And you
also pray for me. At least you can say to God, 'Help this poor man.'"
And then Hassan said, 'When I was meditating and meditating for years on end,
nothing was happening, and many times the moment came when I was so desperate,
so hopeless that I thought to stop all this nonsense. There is no God, and all this
prayer is just madness, all this meditation is false -- and suddenly I would remember
the thief who would say every night, "God willing, tomorrow it is going to happen."
'So I tried one day more. If the thief was so hopeful, with such hope and trust, I should
try at least one day more. And many times it happened, but the thief and the memory
of him helped me to wait one day more. And one day, it happened, it DID happen! I
bowed down. I was thousands of miles away from the thief and his house, but I bowed
down in his direction. He was my first Master.
'And my second Master was a dog. I was thirsty and I was going towards the river,
and a dog came. He was also thirsty. He looked into the river, he saw another dog
there -- his own image -- and became afraid. He barked and the other dog barked, too.
But his thirst was so much that he would hesitate and go back. He would come again
and look into the water and find the dog there. But the thirst was so much that he
suddenly jumped into the water, and the image disappeared. He drank the water, he
swam in the water -- it was a hot summer. And I was watching. I knew that a message
had come to me from God. One has to jump in spite of all fears.
'When I was on the verge of jumping into the unknown, the same fear was there. I
would go to the very edge, hesitate, and come back. And I would remember the dog.
If the dog could manage, why not I? And then one day I jumped into the unknown. I
disappeared and only the unknown was left behind. The dog was my second Master.
'And the third Master was a small child. I entered into a town and a small child was
bringing a candle, a lit candle, hiding it in his hands and going to the mosque to put
the candle there. Just joking, I asked the boy, "Have you lit the candle yourself?" He
said, "Yes, sir." And I asked, jokingly, "Can you tell me from where the light came?
There was a moment when the candle was unlit, then there was a moment when the
candle was lit, can you show me the source from which the light came? And you have
lit it, so you must have seen the light coming -- from where?" And the boy laughed
and blew out the candle, and said, "Now you have seen the light going, where has it
gone? You tell me!" And my ego was shattered, and my whole knowledge was
shattered. And that moment I felt my own stupidity. Since then I dropped all
knowledgeability.'
Hassan talked about three Masters. And he said, 'There have been many, and no time
is left for me to talk about them all.'
Yes, this is true, I had no Master because I had millions of Masters. I have learnt from
every possible source.
If you can be that kind of disciple you need not have a Master. But remember, it is not
that you do not have a Master. Either you choose one or you choose all, but in any
case you have to be a disciple.
To be a disciple is a must on the path. What does it mean to be a disciple? It means to
be able to learn, to be available to learn, to be vulnerable to existence. What actually
happens when you choose a Master? You start learning how to learn. And with one
Master, slowly slowly you get in tune, and slowly slowly you see the point that in the
same way you can get in tune with the whole existence.
The Master is just a miniature of the whole. Coming closer to the Master you start
becoming aware of the beatitude, of closeness, of love, of intimacy, of involvement,
of commitment. And slowly slowly you see the point that if just being so close to one
single person can be such a tremendous joy, how much more it will be when you are
close to the whole. The Master is just the beginning, the Master is not the end. And
the true Master is only a door -- through him you pass and go beyond. The true Master
helps you to go beyond him.
You say, 'You had no Master. No Buddha has a Master. Sometimes I think that
choosing a Master means to prevent one's own enlightenment.'
Enlightenment is simply enlightenment; it is neither mine nor yours. The ego is
separate, the essence is not separate. To think in terms of your own enlightenment is
to be caught in the net, in the trap of the ego again. You miss the whole point. If you
think of 'your own' enlightenment, just as you think of your own car, your own house,
your own wife, you are starting to think of enlightenment also as something that you
will possess. You will not be there to possess it. You will be possessed by it.
And to surrender to a Master simply means an experiment in being possessed by
somebody. You drop yourself and the other enters you and fills you. You learn
surrender. It is just the ABE of surrender. But you cannot learn the xYz if you have
not even learned the ABE of it. When you go to learn how to swim you don't go
directly to the ocean, you don't go to deep waters, you learn in shallow water near the
bank or you learn in a swimming pool.
The Master is like a swimming pool where you can learn how to swim. Once you
have learned, all the oceans are yours, then you can go anywhere. Then this whole
existence belongs to you. But you are no more there. In fact, it will be better to say
you belong to the whole existence -- not that you possess enlightenment,
enlightenment possesses you.
'Sometimes I think that choosing a Master means to prevent one's own enlightenment.'
You don't have a Master yet, so who has prevented you from becoming enlightened?
Why are you not enlightened yet? Then those who don't have Masters must be
enlightened. If choosing a Master prevents enlightenment, then those who don't have
Masters must be enlightened. Choosing the Master does not prevent enlightenment.
Getting caught by the Master and getting caught into the Master -- which prevents
enlightenment -- these are two different things. That is why Buddha says, 'If you meet
me on the way, kill me immediately.' And I say to you too: If you see me on the way,
kill me immediately.
The Master is a ladder. You have to use it and you have to go beyond it. The Master is
a boat. You have to use it, and when you have reached the other shore you have to
leave it. You need not carry it on your head. If you carry it on your head you are
stupid.
And you have not reached anywhere. You must be dreaming, because such stupid
people never reach to the other shore.
Choosing the Master does not prevent enlightenment; but a moment comes when you
have to go beyond the Master, then don't cling -- clinging to the Master will prevent
you. But if there is a real Master he will not allow you to cling to him. That is the
definition of a real Master. He teaches you to get involved, he teaches you to become
committed, and one day he teaches you to become uncommitted again, to become
uninvolved again. Then the Master is perfect.
The ordinary so-called masters just teach you one thing: how to become attached to
them and then to remain attached to them. That's the definition of a pseudo master.
Avoid the pseudo masters.
But to find a true Master is not going to prevent your enlightenment. You will not
become enlightened without him. It is a paradoxical phenomenon. You have to choose
the Master and you have to go beyond the Master. If you understand this paradox, my
answer will be clear to you.
The third question:
Question 3
I WANT TO CONQUER THE KINGDOM OF GOD. HOW TO DO IT?
God cannot be conquered. The very idea is foolish. You have to be conquered by God,
you have to allow God to conquer you, and on the contrary you are saying, 'I want to
conquer the kingdom of God.' This is the male ego, the aggressive mind: it always
thinks in terms of conquering -- conquer nature, conquer God, conquer love. And you
have destroyed everything that you have conquered. You have destroyed the beauty of
nature, the ecology, the inner harmony of nature by your conquering it.
Even a man like Bertrand Russell writes a book called THE CONQUEST OF
NATURE. But this is how the Western mind has been thinking continuously -- in
terms of conquering. Either conquer this world or conquer that world, but you remain
an Alexander.
This is not the way to approach love, this is not the way to pray. The very word
'conquering' is ugly. Surrendering, letting God conquer you, allowing him to enter
you... Don't prevent him. You need not go in search of him, you need not become a
soldier to conquer. That's the difference between a soldier and a sannyasin: the soldier
wants to conquer, the sannyasin wants to be conquered.
There was a loud hammering on the door of heaven. St. Peter appeared and said, 'I say,
that's a tremendous racket. Who is making all the fuss?'
The shabby man standing there said, 'I'm Paddy McGinnis and I'm strong with the
IRA these thirty years.'
St. Peter said, 'I'm sorry, Mr. McGinnis, but we have no record of you. You can't come
in.'
'And who is saying anything about coming in?' said Paddy. 'I'm here a-tellin' you,
you've got fifteen minutes to evacuate the place!'
This is the meaning of conquering God and the kingdom of God.
Drop this whole mind. This mind won't allow you. This mind is irreverent. This mind
is incapable of knowing what worship is, what prayer is. Be a little more aware, alert
about what you are asking. Do you want to possess God in your hands? Do you want
God to be in your bank balance? God is not a treasure to be put in the bank, and God
is not a thing that you can hold in your fist. God is not a thing! God is not a property!
Remember not to use the words that you use in your ordinary ego trips; these words
will mislead you. These words show your ambition. These words are political. These
words are not religious. A religious person surrenders, he prays, he waits, he opens up
his being. He trusts, he says to God, 'Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done.' He prays,
'Let me be destroyed utterly, completely, so there is no hindrance left. Let me be
absolutely empty so you can come and fill me totally.'
The fourth question:
Question 4
MY ORTHODOX CHRISTIAN PARENTS THINK THAT YOU ARE A
DANGEROUS SOPHIST, AND SOME WICKED FORCE IS WORKING
THROUGH YOU TO DESTROY RELIGION. WHY DO THEY THINK LIKE
THAT?
It is nothing new. It has always been so. It has
d joy cang to do with Christians, this is so with Hindus, this is so with Buddhists, and
this has always been so. They were thinking in the same way about Christ, too. These
are the same people. They were thinking in the same way about Buddha, too, and
these are the same people. Man is a very strange animal. The most strange thing about
man is that he never learns; he goes on doing the same thing again and again.
Why did they crucify Jesus? What was wrong with this man? They thought him
wicked, they thought him a representative of evil, a personification of the devil. They
were angry. And, of course, the people who were interested in Jesus were younger
people, because only young people can be interested in the new. The older generation
has too much of an investment with the established, is too involved with the status
quo. Do you think Jesus' followers were old people? He himself was young, and the
people that surrounded him were young people. Parents were angry, very angry.
Rabbis were angry, priests were angry, because he was bringing a revolution. If Jesus
is right, then the whole established religion is wrong. If Jesus is right, then what about
the priests? Jesus and the priests can't both be right -- either Jesus or the priests. The
priests became organized against this man. They had to kill him. And the older
generation was with them, naturally. The mind always feels comfortable with the old
because it is familiar, one is accustomed to it. The new always feels dangerous, one
feels suspicious of it. And religion is always new. True religion is always new, true
religion is always rebellious. Whenever there is a man like Jesus or Buddha, there is
bound to be great trouble.
But Jesus is crucified, and then slowly slowly,Jesus' life becomes the foundation of a
new, established religion. Once Christianity becomes an established religion
supported by the state and supported by the elders and Christianity itself has its own
priesthood, then there is no problem. Then if a man like me comes, problems arise.
You say, 'My orthodox Christian parents think that you are a dangerous sophist, and
some wicked force is working through you to destroy religion.'
In a way they are true. What they call religion is not religion, and I am certainly in
favour of destroying it. What I call religion they cannot understand; it is impossible
for them to conceive. They have become too stereotyped in their thinking, their minds
are too conditioned, fixed. They are no longer fluid, flexible, they are rigid. The older
a person becomes the more rigid he becomes.
Let me tell you a few things that were said about Christians in the early days of
Christianity, and then you will understand what your parents are saying about me.
Tacitus says, 'There is a group, hated for their abominations, called Christians.'
And Suetonius says, 'The Christians are a class of men given to a new and wicked
superstition.'
And Celcius says, 'They worship to an extravagant degree this man who appeared
recently. They are like frogs holding a symposium round a swamp, debating which of
them is the most sinful.'
And Lucian says, 'The poor wretches have convinced themselves that they are going
to be immortal and live for all time by worshipping that crucified sophist and living
under his laws... They receive their doctrines by tradition, without any definite
evidence.'
And Pliny the Younger says, 'It is their habit, on a fixed day, to assemble before
daylight and recite by turns a form of words to Christ as a god. The contagion of this
perverse and extravagant superstition has penetrated not only the cities but the
villages and the country too. Yet it seems possible to stop it and set it right.'
These things were not said about me, these things were said about Christ. And similar
things have been said about Buddha.
Hindus have created a beautiful story about Buddha. They say that he was an
incarnation of God. They had to say it. Hindus are more polite and, of course, more
cunning, more sophisticated, and they know how to play with words. Buddha was an
incarnation of God, they say, but not a good incarnation.
But how can an incarnation of God be bad? They have a beautiful story to illustrate it.
They say when God created the world he created hell and heaven and earth, the three
worlds. Then millions of years passed and nobody went to hell; it remained empty.
And the devil and all his disciples were very angry, and they were waiting and waiting
and nobody would come. And every arrangement was ready: the fire was burning, and
nobody was coming. Finally they had to go to God, and the devil said, 'This is
nonsense. Why did you create hell if nobody is going to come there? And what are we
doing there? -- just waiting and waiting! And how long do we have to wait? Not even
a single soul has entered. The whole thing is pointless. Either send a few people so we
become occupied... And we have rehearsed and we have trained ourselves and made
ourselves so skillful that we are hankering... we have to do something! You are
driving us mad! Either send a few people there, or drop the whole project!'
God said, 'You wait. Then I will have to come to the earth. I will be born as Gautam
the Buddha, and I will mislead people and misguide people. Then they will start
falling into hell automatically.'
Then God came as Gautam the Buddha, and he misguided people because hell needs
people. And since Buddha misguided people, hell has been overcrowded.
Now, see the beauty of the story and the cunningness of it. Buddha is accepted as an
incarnation of God, but it is just to send people to hell. So beware of Buddha, don't
follow him; otherwise you will go to hell. Buddha was here to help the devil, to give
him some occupation. Since then hell has been overcrowded, there is no space: people
have to wait for years outside the gate.
This has always been so, and this is going to remain being so. Religion, whenever it
comes fresh from the beyond, is very shattering to tradition. And the traditional
people become afraid. Not that they are worried about religion being destroyed -- they
are not religious at all, otherwise they would not be afraid of it -- their religion is only
a social formality. They talk about God because it is convenient to talk about God.
They go to the church, too, because it makes things easier. The church functions as a
lubricant. It is a Sunday religion. It is good, it keeps you in good company, and
everybody knows that you are religious. That helps in many ways.
The church is no more than a Rotary Club or a Lions' Club. If you are a Rotarian, it
helps you. People know that you must be good if you belong to the Rotary Club. And
in the Rotary Club you become acquainted with all the topmost people of the town.
Friendship arises: it helps in your business, in your day-to-day life. The church is
nothing but a kind of religious club: it is convenient. Nobody is sincerely there,
people are just showing respect to Christ, paying service -- but that service is lip
service. They don't bother a bit about Christ, Christianity, and all his teachings.
Who bothers about Christ's teachings? Who follows them? If you had followed Christ
the world would have been totally different: there would not have been any wars. And
half of the world is Christian. If Christians really follow Jesus... Jesus says, 'Love
your enemies,' and Christians go on bombing the enemy. It is Christians who bombed
Japan, who used the first atomic bomb. Now think of Jesus watching from his place -what will be happening to him? Christians dropping atom bombs? And he has said to
these people, 'Love your enemy as yourself.'
Who has followed Jesus? There is no question of following. People just go to the
church. It is a good feeling to go to the church, to remain religious.
I have heard...
The airplane was going through some especially turbulent weather, but the pilot knew
he had everything under control. He tried to calm the passengers with soothing words
spoken over the loudspeaker system. He also asked the stewardesses to reassure the
people that everything would be all right.
One very religious little old lady, however, would not be comforted. The stewardess
told her how capable the pilot was and how reliable the plane's technology was, but
the woman was still sure she'd never see the ground again.
At a loss, the stewardess finally called on the highest court of appeal, 'Just trust in
providence,' she said soothingly.
The little old lady's eyes opened even wider, 'Is it as bad as that?' she asked.
A religious old lady... But to really think of God means that death is certain. 'Is it as
bad as that?'
People have double faces. Their original face is not even known to themselves. People
have split personalities. Your parents will be thinking they are Christian and religious.
They are neither Christian nor religious. If they are really religious, they will
understand me because whatsoever I am saying is the same -- exactly the same,
precisely the same. My language may be different from Jesus' -- it has to be, twenty
centuries have passed -- but what I am doing is exactly the same work, the continuity
of the same work.
But I can understand their problem, too. They are losing their hold on you, and they
are afraid.
Just the other night I was reading an article. In Germany parents have formed a certain
society to prevent young people from going into new religions, particularly Eastern
mystic experiences. In America they are creating a lot of trouble for the young people,
too.
You will be surprised that parents are hiring kidnappers. Young people are being
kidnapped by their own parents and then they are being given to psychologists.
Certain psychologists are trying to deprogramme them, they are called
deprogrammers. They think the young people have been conditioned.
For example, if you really become too involved with me, and your parents become
very afraid, and you don't want to go back to your country, you can be kidnapped.
Your own parents can do it. 'For your own sake, because you have fallen in the trap of
a devil, of some evil force.' And it looks to them...'What are you doing with orange
clothes and a beard and long hair and the mala? And who is this man... very
evil-looking? And what is wrong with wearing a cross? having a picture of Jesus?
What are you doing there?' And if they come and see the Dynamic Meditation,
Kundalini, they will go crazy. They will become very concerned.
Yes, you can be kidnapped, and then you can be forced into what they call
deprogramming to uncondition you. They think you have been hypnotized, so you
have to be dehypnotized. So they will teach you Christianity and the Christian
catechism again. And they will force you day in, day out, for months, so that you can
again become a Christian, and you can again say, 'Yes I believe in God and the Son
and the Holy Ghost,' and then they are at ease. When you believe in the Holy Ghost,
then all is okay. And when you start reading the Bible again, all is okay. 'Now you
have come back, you have become religious.' When you start making atom bombs
again, you are really Christian, Catholic. When you go to the army and they cut your
long hair and make you a soldier, then you are a perfect Christian, a Catholic. When
you start a cut-throat competition in the world for money, for power, for prestige,
when you start destroying others so that you can reach higher and higher for worldly
possessions, you are perfect, you are a religious person.
Even politicians are thought to be religious persons because they go to the church,
they listen to the sermon of the priest. Politicians are 'religious', and my sannyasins
are 'not religious'!
You will have to understand it. You will have to be very very patient with your parents.
You will have to be very kind, too. They need compassion. They are encaged in a
certain ideology and they cannot look outside it. They are incapable of feeling
anything new, of being anything new. They are incapable of understanding, they have
become too rigid. Their whole ideology has become a settled phenomenon, and they
are afraid. If they see you happy, they can only think you have gone mad, because
they have lived an unhappy life and a very religious life.
And they know religious people are unhappy people -- sad, with long faces. They
cannot believe that you can be religious and dancing, and you can be religious and
laughing, and you can be religious and yet happy. Then what about all their saints?
Were they fools? They lived with long faces the whole of their lives. They carried
their life as a burden, as if a mountain were being carried on their head, and you are so
lightfooted, so weightless, with no burden, with no seriousness around you. You are
such a laughter, how can they believe you are religious? The only thing possible is
that you have been hypnotized. How can you be so happy in such an unhappy world?
It is not possible. You must be living in a kind of illusion. Hence they say, 'This man
is an evil force, he has hypnotized you. The laughter that you are going through is
false, the joy that you are experiencing is false. Our misery is right and true, and your
joy is false.'
When they will be able to make you miserable again they will be at ease. Their son
has come back home, or their daughter has come back home.
You will have to be understanding. They cannot understand me, they cannot
understand you, but they are your parents and you owe something to them. Be loving
to them. Don't be antagonistic. Don't resent them. Don't start arguing and fighting
with them because that will make them more convinced that they are right and you are
wrong. Be more loving. Nobody has loved them; they have lived in a false world
where all is pretension. Nobody has loved them. If you love them, it will be more
convincing than logic.
Listen to them. Don't start arguing. Listen patiently. Nobody has ever listened to them.
That's why psychoanalysis has become so important in the world. Psychoanalysis is
nothing but just finding a patient listener, the psychoanalyst, to whom you can talk to
your heart's content, and say whatsoever you want -- sense, nonsense, whatsoever you
want.
People are feeling suffocated, boiling, within. They want to say something but nobody
is there to hear. The world has turned deaf. The man cannot talk to his woman,
because the moment you talk conflict starts. You say something, she understands
something else. The woman cannot talk to the man because talking is always risky. It
is better to keep quiet and to remain silent. At least it gives you a feeling of peace, that
all is quiet. Say a single word, and the argument starts. Sooner or later people learn
that it is better to remain silent, not to say anything.
Nobody has listened to them. Just see the misery of the fact that they have to go and
find a person to listen... But they have to pay for it, and the costs are really very high.
Psychoanalysis is one of the highly paying professions. It is a Jewish concern and
Jews know how to do business. Freud founded the greatest empire, and his followers
are just looting, just enjoying. And what are they doing? They simply listen. No other
help is needed. If you listen to the person for months together, years together, he loses
steam. And once he has thrown his steam out he feels calm and quiet. And he thinks
this is because of psychoanalysis.
In older societies, more primitive societies, this is not needed because people are very
willing to listen. Go to an Indian village -- people are very willing to listen. They have
enough time to listen, nobody is in a hurry. People are sitting and talking and listening
to each other. You cannot convince Indian villagers that there is any need for
psychoanalysis, they are psychoanalyzing each other already; they need not pay for it.
But in a highly sophisticated, cultured, civilized society, people are in such a hurry
that nobody is available to talk to anybody else. Parents never see their children, or
even if they see them, then just polite words: 'Hello, how are you?' and they are gone.
Or a pat on the head which is almost mechanical, or a hug which is false, or even a
kiss which is just an empty gesture. But nobody talks, nobody faces the other.
There is no friendship, no love. Parents live in one world, the children live in another.
Parents are so suffocated by their own misery, helplessness, turmoil, that they have to
drown themselves in alcohol. Children are getting drowned in drugs. And the strange
thing is that the people who drown themselves in alcohol are very much against drugs.
And they are doing the same thing; it is not different, it is the same thing. Somehow to
drown oneself, to forget all about oneself and the world and the problems... Even
children have so many problems because we teach them competition, ambition. We
send them to the school and the competition starts: 'You have to be first. You have to
bring an A grade.' Now you have made them anxious. They are continuously in
turmoil, anxiety: whether they will be able to make it or not.
Small children have ulcers. Young people are having heart attacks. Young people are
going mad, committing suicide -- this has not happened ever before -- or if you don't
want to commit suicide, you don't want to go mad, you don't want to have ulcers,
cancer, heart attacks, then drown yourself in drugs. But then the state is against you,
then the society is against you, and you feel guilty. You are doing something illegal,
you are a criminal; they will throw you into gaol.
The only possibility of getting out of this whole nonsense is to find a new space in
your being through prayer, through meditation; to find your original source of life and
energy. And that's what you are doing here with me. If you really go into meditation
you will not need alcohol, you will not need drugs. If you really go into meditation,
your life will be a life of love, of sharing, of joy -- non-competitive, non-ambitious.
You will not become a politician, you will live as a nobody. You will not suffer from
an inferiority complex because you will not compare yourself with anybody else. And
you will live in great gratitude because your life will have joy. You will not be
attached to misery because you will not have any investment in misery. If you don't
have any ego, you need not have any investment in misery. Then you can feast and
your life can be a festival. That's what I am teaching
And to me this is religion: to make life a feast, a festival; to transform energy in such
a way that you become a celebration.
But your parents will find it difficult. Help them to understand. Be loving. Listen
patiently to their arguments, and don't argue, rather, love. Just show by your being, by
your integrity, by your patience, by your caring about them that you are moving on
the right path. It is up to you: if you can prove by your love that you are moving on
the right path, only then will they think that the man you are with is not evil. If you
argue and fight and become antagonistic -- which seems to be very natural, because
they will be antagonistic and in a fighting mood, and the natural reaction is to be the
same: tit for tat -- if you do that, then you will be proving that your Master is evil and
you will be proving that you have moved on a wrong path.
What I am going to be proved to be in the world depends on
The last question:
Question 5
CAN'T SEX BE TRANSCENDED WITHOUT GOING INTO IT?
Then what is the need to transcend it?
The need of transcendence arises only because you are in it. You are born in it, you
are born out of it. You are a sexual phenomenon.
Except for Jesus, nobody has been born of a virgin. And Christians insist too much on
the theory that Mary was a virgin so that they can condemn sex. If Jesus is also born
of sex, then it will be difficult to condemn sex. In fact, Jesus was born out of sex as
much as anybody else.
The body has to be constituted from male and female energy, otherwise the body
cannot be constituted. To say that Mary was virgin is to say that you have electricity
in your house with only one pole: positive or negative. That will be just as nonsensical.
Electricity needs to have both poles, positive and negative. Without those two poles
electricity cannot exist, cannot come into existence -- not even in Jesus' house; the
electricity will need two poles. The electricity does not care who you are -- even in
my house it needs two poles.
You can ask Haridas. He tries, the whole day he tries, continuously working to make
electricity virgin. But up to now he has not succeeded. But later on you can write
stories about me that in Osho's house the electricity had only one pole. These stories
are always created later on, because you have to prove that your Master was
exceptional.
Jainas say that Mahavir never perspired. Now, what kind of foolishness...? He missed
the joy of perspiring in the sun. And he lived naked and moved naked. In fact, he must
have perspired more than anybody else. If you say I don't perspire it may be right
because I live in an air-conditioned room, but Mahavir, moving naked, never
perspired? Something seems to be suspicious, fishy. He must have been stinking. To
hide the fact you have to cover it and say that he never perspired, so the whole root is
cut.
He never defecated, never urinated. How can you think of Mahavir pissing? That does
not look right at all.
These stories are created. These stories simply prove that the followers are stupid.
They don't say anything about Mahavir or Christ or Mohammed, they simply prove
that the followers that came in their wake are neurotic.
Jesus was born out of two sexes just as everybody else is.
You come out of sex, each cell of your body is a sexual cell. Each cell of your body
has two poles: the feminine and the masculine, yin and yang.
You ask me, 'Can't sex be transcended without going into it?'
The only possibility is not to be born. Once you are born you are already a sexual
being. Whether you make love to a woman or man doesn't matter. You can be a
celibate, but to be a celibate does not mean to go beyond sexuality. Sexuality has
already penetrated. The moment you were in the womb of your mother you became a
sexual being. There is no way to avoid it. So all that you can do is repress it. You will
become unnatural, and your whole life will be a perverted life. Repression is possible,
but transcendence is not possible in the way you are asking about.
I have heard...
Ellen and Dolph had been married thirty years and never missed a night of connubial
bliss. One day Ellen visited her doctor and was told that she must have complete rest
and quiet for six months or she would not live.
Ellen and Dolph decided they should stay completely apart during this period. She
moved into an upstairs bedroom and he remained downstairs.
After three months of complete abstinence and solitude, his will-power collapsed, and
Dolph started for her bedroom. As he started to climb the stairs, he saw her coming
down.
'Dear,' she said, 'I was just coming down to die.'
'I'm glad, honey,' he said, 'because I was just going up to kill you.'
Don't be mad, let things be simple. There is no need to kill or die. Repression will
make things very complicated in your life; you will become split, schizophrenic -- just
celibate on the surface, and deep down just the opposite of it.
Transcendence means the disappearance of the need for the other, the disappearance
of the desire to get lost into a woman or into a man. And this is possible only if you
have understood. And understanding comes only through experience. So I don't say
drop out of your relationships, rather, become more meditative in your relationships.
Making love, let it be a meditation too. And you will be surprised: if while making
love you also move in a meditative state you will have great insights into what is
happening, and the whole urge called sex will become conscious. And once it has
become conscious it can disappear.
And it disappears on its own; you need not cultivate, you need not practise anything
for it. When it goes on its own it is beautiful. Yes, sex disappears -- one transcends it
-- but not by fighting it.
This is true, and because of this truth much misunderstanding has happened in the
world. Sex disappeared in Buddha's life, sex disappeared in Christ's life. People have
seen sex disappearing, and people have seen that when sex disappears there is great
splendour. Something of the sky dances on the earth. The beyond reaches to the earth.
The mundane becomes suffused with the sacred. And because people have seen these
things, great desire has arisen in them too to transcend sex. But then the whole thing
goes wrong: they start fighting with it.
It is a secret science, and if you don't move rightly, everything will go wrong.
A man is told by a friend that he should pick a wife who is 'an economist in the
kitchen, a lady in the parlour, and a prostitute in bed'.
They meet sometime after the wedding and the friend asks if he is satisfied with his
choice.
'Well,' says the newly-wed, 'I did what you said, but I guess I made a mistake
somewhere. The woman I married turned out to be a prostitute in the parlour, a lady in
the kitchen, and an economist in bed!'
Just a little mismanagement, just a thing here and a thing there misplaced, and
everything goes wrong.
Transcendence is never through repression, transcendence is through understanding,
transcendence is through awareness.
Just the other night I was giving sannyas to a psychoanalyst -- a beautiful man. I have
given him the name: Anand Veetkam. It means bliss beyond sex. And to him I said
that if you become meditative while making love you will come to know a few
immensely significant things.
The first and the most significant thing is that when you are going into a deep orgasm,
when the climax is happening, there is great joy because in that moment sex
disappears. Sex brings you to the orgasmic state, and once its purpose is fulfilled, sex
disappears. In the orgasmic state there is no sexuality left in you. You are simply
throbbing and there is no desire. You are utterly herenow, there is no future, no fantasy,
no imagination, nothing. And when the orgasm happens, the man is alone -- the
woman may be there but he is not aware of the woman. And the woman is alone -- the
man is there but she is not aware of the mall.
Orgasm is individual: it is happening inside the man, it is happening inside the woman.
The other has triggered it, but then the function of the other is finished; you are no
more interested in the other. In deep orgasm you are simply inside yourself. There is
no sex in it, hence the bliss. And after a good orgasm, for hours you will feel very
very blissful. And for hours you will not think of sex again. The desire has left you.
What has happened?
If you are feeling blissful, the desire cannot be there. If the desire is there, bliss cannot
be there. Desire and bliss are never together.
And if you meditate deeply while making love, you will become aware that time
disappears. At the peak there is no time, suddenly you are herenow. Only then do you
know the meaning of here and now, otherwise you are in the past or in the future. And
when time disappears, mind disappears, because mind is another aspect of time,
another name for time. Mind is past plus future. When there is no time there is no
mind. Just think: no mind, no time, no sexual desire -- and there is great bliss.
But people miss it because they are not alert about it. People go into love-making
unconsciously, mechanically. Go consciously, mindfully, remembering what is
happening, watching, remaining a witness, and that will release understanding in you.
That will release awareness in you. And awareness is transcendence. Awareness is
freedom.
The Secret of Secrets, Vol 1
Chapter #7
Chapter title: Turning the Key
17 August 1978 am in Buddha Hall
Archive code:
7808170
ShortTitle:
SOS107
Audio: Yes
Video:
No
Length: 0 mins
MASTER LU-TSU SAID: WHEN THE LIGHT IS MADE TO MOVE IN A CIRCLE,
ALL THE ENERGIES OF HEAVEN AND EARTH, OF THE LIGHT AND THE
DARK, ARE CRYSTALLIZED. WHEN ONE BEGINS TO APPLY THIS MAGIC IT
IS AS IF, IN THE MIDDLE OF BEING, THERE WERE NON-BEING. WHEN IN
THE COURSE OF TIME THE WORK IS COMPLETED, AND BEYOND THE
BODY THERE IS A BODY, IT IS AS IF, IN THE MIDDLE OF NON-BEING,
THERE WERE BEING. ONLY AFTER CONCENTRATED WORK OF A
HUNDRED DAYS WILL THE LIGHT BE GENUINE, THEN ONLY WILL IT
BECOME SPIRIT-FIRE. AFTER A HUNDRED DAYS THERE DEVELOPS BY
ITSELF IN THE MIDST OF THE LIGHT A POINT OF THE TRUE LIGHT-POLE.
THEN SUDDENLY THERE DEVELOPS THE SEED-PEARL. IT IS AS IF A MAN
AND WOMAN EMBRACED AND A CONCEPTION TOOK PLACE. THEN ONE
MUST BE QUITE STILL AND WAIT.
IN THE MIDST OF THE PRIMAL TRANSFORMATION, THE RADIANCE OF
THE LIGHT IS THE DETERMINING THING. IN THE PHYSICAL WORLD IT IS
THE SUN; IN MAN, THE EYE. THIS ENERGY IS DIRECTED OUTWARD
(FLOWS DOWNWARD). THEREFORE THE WAY OF THE GOLDEN FLOWER
DEPENDS WHOLLY ON THE BACKWARD-FLOWING METHOD.
THE CIRCULATION OF THE LIGHT IS NOT ONLY A FANTASY.
BY CONCENTRATING THE THOUGHTS, ONE CAN FLY; BY
CONCENTRATING THE DESIRES, ONE FALLS. WHEN A PUPIL TAKES
LITTLE CARE OF HIS THOUGHTS AND MUCH CARE OF HIS DESIRES, HE
GETS INTO THE PATH OF SUBMERSION. ONLY THROUGH
CONTEMPLATION AND QUIETNESS DOES TRUE INTUITION ARISE: FOR
THAT THE BACKWARD-FLOWING METHOD IS NECESSARY.
A GREAT MASTER was asked, What is the Buddha? 'Mind is the Buddha,' he
answered.
When after many years he was asked the same question again by the same disciple, he
said, 'No Buddha, no mind.'
'Then why did you say before, "Mind is the Buddha"?'
'To stop the baby crying! Once the baby stops crying, I say, "No mind, no Buddha!" '
Philosophy is just a toy, a toy to stop the baby crying, and so is theology.
Religion really consists of experience, experimentation; it has nothing to do with
speculation. In its essential nature it is the science of the inner; it is as scientific as any
other science. The difference between religion and science is not of their methodology
but only of their object.
Science looks at the objective world where our energy is flowing, where our light is
flowing. Religion searches into the subjective where our light is not flowing but can
be turned to flow. Hence science is easier than religion. Never for a single moment
think that religion is simpler than science. It is a higher science, how can it be simpler
than science? It is a superior science.
First the light has to flow inwards, then it falls on your being, and then your being is
revealed and you can enter into your being. And to enter into one's own being is to
enter into the kingdom of God. There, you are not and God is: you exist only in the
shadow. When the light flows outward you exist -- but only in the shadow. You exist
because you remain unaware of your real self. Your real self is the supreme self. Your
real self is a 'Self' with a capital S. It has nothing to do with you, it is the self of all.
But for that, a great transformation has to take place.
Nature has prepared you for the outward flow. Nature's function is finished. With man,
nature has reached to its climax, now nothing else is going to happen naturally unless
man makes a decision to go further than nature. Nature has brought you to the point
where you are capable of standing on your own. Man is no longer a child, man has
become adult. Now nature will no longer parent you; there is no need.
Natural evolution has stopped at man. This is a fact. Even scientists are becoming
more and more aware of it: that for thousands of years nothing has happened to man,
man has remained the same -- as if nature's work is done. Now man has to take the
course of further growth into his own hands. That's what religion is.
Religion means: man starts standing on his own feet, becomes responsible for his own
being, starts looking and searching and inquiring into what is the case -- Who am I?
And this should not only be curiosity.
Philosophy is out.of curiosity. Religion is a very sincere, authentic search; it is inquiry.
And there is a great difference between curiosity and inquiry. Curiosity is childish,
just a little itching in the head. You would like to scratch and then you feel satisfied.
Philosophy is that scratching; religion is a life-and-death matter. In philosophy you
never become involved, you remain aloof. You play with the toys, but it is not a
question of life and death. You accumulate knowledge, but you never practise it.
I have heard...
Once upon a time there lived an eminent Confucian scholar. He was a gentleman of
nearly eighty, and was said to have no equal in learning and understanding.
Then a rumour arose that far away a new doctrine had sprung up that was even deeper
than his knowledge. The old gentleman found this intolerable and decided that the
issue had to be settled one way or the other.
In spite of his age he set out on the long journey. After months of hardship on the road,
he arrived at his destination, introduced himself and told the purpose of his visit.
His host, who was a Master of the new Zen school, merely quoted, 'To avoid doing
evil, to do as much good as possible, this is the teaching of all the Buddhas.'
On hearing this, the Confucian gentleman flared up: 'I have come here in spite of the
dangers and hazards of such a long and rough journey and in spite of my advanced
age. And you just quote a little jingle that every three-year-old child knows by heart!
Are you mocking me?'
But the Zen Master replied, 'I am not mocking you, sir. Please consider that though it
is true that every three-year-old child knows this verse, yet even a man of eighty fails
to live up to it!'
Religion is not a question of knowing but of living up to it. Religion is life, and unless
you live it, you will not know anything about what it is. And to live religion one has
to drop all philosophizing and one has to start experimenting. One has to become a lab.
The scientist's lab is outside; the religious person's lab is his own being -- his own
body, his own soul, his own mind. The scientist has to concentrate on the object on
which he is experimenting, his work has to be done with open eyes. The work of
religion has to be done with closed eyes; one has to concentrate upon oneself.
And the complexity is great, because in the world of religion the experimenter and the
experimented upon are the same. Hence the complexity, hence the strangeness, hence
the incomprehensibility, hence the illogicality. The knower and the known are the
same in the world of religion. In the world of science the knower is separate, the
known is separate; things are clear-cut, demarcated. But in religion everything merges,
melts into everything else -- even the knower cannot remain separate. Religion does
not give you knowledge separate from the knower, it does not give you experience
separate from the knower, but as the very essence of the knower.
To be a religious seeker one has to drop all philosophizing. One has to drop all a
PRIORI knowledge, because all a PRIORI knowledge is a hindrance; it stops your
inquiry. Inquiry becomes dishonest -- from the very beginning it becomes poisoned.
How can you inquire if you have already concluded? To be a Christian and to be
religious is impossible, or to be a Hindu and to be religious is impossible. How can
you be religious if you are a Hindu? Being a Hindu means that you have already
concluded, you have decided what truth is. Now what is the point of inquiry? What
are you going to inquire into? All that you will be doing is finding support, arguments,
for what you have already concluded. And your conclusion may be wrong -- nobody
knows -- because your conclusion is not yours, it has been handed to you by the
society.
Society is very interested in giving you conclusions, society is not interested in giving
you consciousness so that you can conclude on your own. Before you become
conscious, before any inquiry starts, society stuffs you with all kinds of conclusions to
STOP the inquiry, because the inquirer is dangerous to society. The non-inquirer is
convenient, the non-inquirer is obedient. He simply takes the orders, the commands,
and follows them. He is conformist, he is conventional. Once you have stuffed
somebody's mind a bit with a belief, you have drugged him. Belief is a drug. He starts
believing, he goes on believing. Slowly slowly he starts thinking that his belief is his
experience.
Belief is a system of hypnosis. You go on suggesting to the child, 'You are a Hindu,
you are a Hindu', you take him to the temple, you lead him through religious,
so-called religious, rituals, ceremonies, and by and by he becomes conditioned to the
idea that he is a Hindu, that all that is Hindu is right and all that is non-Hindu is
wrong.
And the same is being done in every kind of society. You have drugged the child. His
very source of consciousness has been poisoned. And if you believe something, it
starts appearing to be true. If you start believing something, you will find all kinds of
supports for it, all kinds of arguments to help it. Your ego becomes involved. It is not
only a question of truth, deep down it is the question, 'Who is right, me or you? How
can I be wrong -- I have to be right.' So you choose all that supports you; and life is so
complex, you can find all kinds of things in life -- whatsoever you choose, whatsoever
you decide. If you are a pessimist, you will find all kinds of arguments in life which
support pessimism. If you are an optimist, there are all kinds of arguments available to
you.
Life is dual, life is paradoxical, life is multi-dimensional. Hence so many kinds of
philosophies, 'isms', theologies exist in the world. And every theology lives confined
by its own conclusions and feels perfectly right.
It is only in this age that the believers and finding a little difficulty. And this is a great
blessing because they have become aware of other believers too. Now the Hindu is
not so complacent, he cannot be; he knows that there are Christians. And the Christian
cannot go on believing that he has the sole copyright for truth, because he knows that
there is the Mohammedan, and there is the Taoist, and there is the Buddhist. And who
knows? This age is very confused -- it has never been so before.
But remember, this confusion is a great blessing; something is on the way, something
tremendously important is going to happen. This chaos in the mind is the beginning of
a new dawn. In the future people will not be Mohammedans and Hindus and
Buddhists, people will be inquirers. Belief is disappearing and the darkness of belief
is disappearing. Nobody in the future is going to believe. People will inquire, and
when they find, they will trust. Belief is borrowed; trust is one's own experience.
What I am teaching you here is that kind of religion which is going to happen more
and more in the future. I am bringing the future to you in the present. I am making
you pure inquirers, with no belief system, ready to go into experimentation but with
no conclusion, open and ready to accept the truth whatsoever it may be -- but only
ready to accept the truth.
The man who believes is a closed man. His windows and doors are closed; he lives in
a kind of prison. He has to live in a kind of prison -- if he opens the windows and
doors and the sun comes in and the wind comes in and the rain comes in, it is possible
that his belief systems may be disturbed. If the truth enters from every side, it will be
impossible for him to protect his belief. He has to hide from truth, he has to live in an
enclosed world, windowless, so nothing can disturb him, so he can go on believing
undisturbed. This is good for the society, but very hazardous for the health of the
individual.
Society has been giving you toys to play with -- just as when you give toys to the
children so that they become involved in playing and then they don't disturb you. The
parents are at ease, the father can read his newspaper, the mother can work in the
kitchen. The child is involved in the toys.
In India, in the villages, this has been the usual practice. Poor women who have to go
to work in the fields have to take their small children with them. If the children are big
enough they can play on their own, but when they are very small they cannot play on
their own. They are a constant distraction for the mother. They will cry -- they are
hungry, or they have wet the place or they are cold. And the mother has to come and
care for them continuously and this is distracting to the work, and the boss won't
allow it. So it has been the usual practice to give a little opium to the child. Then the
child is fast asleep in the blissful slumber that the opium has given to him, dreaming
beautiful dreams, and the mother can remain undistracted in her work. This is good
for the work, this is good for the mother, this is good for the landlord, but this is very
hazardous and dangerous for the health of the child -- for his future also this is
poisonous. But this is what has been happening.
Society gives you beliefs so that you need not experiment, so that you need not be
distracted into the inquiry, because the inquiry will take so much of your energy that
you will not be able to be a good clerk or a good stationmaster or a good collector or a
good policeman. You will be distracted by your inquiry, you will become more
interested in the inner and your interest in the outer will start disappearing.
Society wants you to live an extrovert life, society wants you to be efficient in the
world, to be more productive in the world -- whether the production is good or bad is
not the point. If you work in a factory where bombs are created you have to be
efficient and productive. If you work in the army you have to be efficient and always
obedient. Wherever you are, whether the work is good or bad is not the question.
Whatsoever the society has decided you have to follow, you have to fall in line.
If you become an inquirer, then there is danger; you will become more and more of an
introvert. Your priorities will change, your values will be different. You may not care
much about money, you may not care much about power, you may not remain
ambitious, you may not be possessive anymore, your interest in property may
disappear. You will start searching for inner riches, the inner kingdom of God.
But then you will become less and less efficient for society. And society cannot afford
a world, although it will be a better one, where more people are introverted and are
doing their own thing rather than being pulled and pushed by others to do their things.
It will be a better world where people are more meditative. Then politicians will not
be able to create as much mischief as they have been creating in the past. Wars will
disappear automatically if people are more introverted. Then who will care to fight
and who will care to kill and murder?
And violence is being painted in such ways that it appears beautiful -- murder in the
name of 'nation', murder in the name of Islam, murder in the name of Christianity.
And then murder becomes beautiful. Murder is murder; whether you murder for
Christianity or the Church or the country or the nation doesn't matter. These are just
excuses to murder, excuses to be destructive, excuses to be mad.
After every ten years a great world war breaks out upon the world, because in each
ten-year period people gather so much pus in their beings that it has to be poured out.
They gather so much poison in their beings that they cannot contain it anymore. A
madness, a global madness, explodes.
If people are more introverted, wars will disappear, politics will disappear. If people
are more introverted, of course they will not be so efficient, there is no need, but they
will be happier. They may not be so continuously occupied, madly occupied, in things,
but they will be more happy, more joyous, more celebrating. They will create enough
of what is needed, they will not be concerned with the unnecessary.
But we have become too concerned with the unnecessary, with that which is not
needed at all. We can afford to be without it, but yet we cannot, because our training
has made it in such a way that we have to go on rushing and running. We don't know
any other way to be.
Society drugs you with beliefs and kills your inquiry from the very beginning.
Religion is to revive your inquiry again. Religion means taking you back to your
original source.
And remember, it is not curiosity, it is a very sincere search. To live without knowing
oneself is almost synonymous with being dead. How can one really live without
knowing who one is? What will life mean if you don't know yourself? What will you
do with yourself if you don't know who you are? How will you decide what is going
to be your destiny? Yes, there will be much noise, but there will be no music. There
will be much calculation, but there will be no celebration. And there will be much
running and rushing hither and thither but no arrival. Between birth and death you
will live in a kind of constant tension but you will not know the beauty, the
benediction of life and existence, because you will not even have known the beauty
and benediction of your inner being, which is the closest thing to know, the first thing
to know.
The first step towards life is that of self-knowledge. It cannot be just curiosity. There
are many people who inquire out of curiosity, but curiosity can never be
life-transforming, again it is just an itch which can be satisfied very easily.
Once upon a time there was an innkeeper who, strange to say, was unable to make
both ends meet. Nothing that he tried was of any effect. He tried to put his house
under an entirely new management, but that too was in vain. So in despair he
consulted a wise woman.
'It is quite simple,' she said, as she pocketed her fee. 'You must change the name of
your inn.'
'But it has been "The Golden Lion" for centuries,' he replied.
'You must change the name,' she said. 'You must call it "The Eight Bells"; and you
must have a row of seven bells as the sign. '
'Seven?' he said. 'But that's absurd; what will that do?'
'Go home and see,' said the wise woman.
So he went home and did as she told him.
And straightaway every wayfarer who was passing paused to count the bells and then
hurried into the inn to point out the mistake, each apparently believing himself to be
the only one who had noticed it, and all wishing to refresh themselves for their
trouble.
And the innkeeper waxed fat and made his fortune.
This is how people are. The name of the inn is 'The Eight Bells' and the symbol has
only seven bells -- enough to make people curious, enough to keep them occupied.
But this kind of curiosity is not going to lead you anywhere. People ask about God,
people ask about truth, but you can see from their eyes, by the way they have asked,
that they don't mean business. Just as people talk about the weather, people talk about
God too. It is 'polite' conversation. Nobody seems to be involved, nobody seems to be
in a passionate search. And unless your search is of great passion, of tremendous
commitment, of utter involvement, you will not be able to know the secrets of your
being, because much work will have to be done. The curious person cannot do that
much work. Curiosity is not enough to take you far away; its energy is very small,
very tiny. Only a sincere passion to know can take you through all the trouble that will
be needed. It is an uphill task.
So the first thing to understand with THE SECRET OF THE GOLDEN FLOWER IS:
not to be philosophic, not to be drugged by society, not to believe and not to
disbelieve either. Remember, whenever I say, 'Don't believe,' I am not saying that you
should disbelieve -- disbelief is another kind of belief, a negative kind -- when I say,
'Don't believe,' I am saying both belief and disbelief have to be dropped. You have to
be simply open, with no conclusion. You have to be simply aware of your ignorance,
with no knowledge hiding your ignorance. You have to be innocent, innocently
ignorant, you have to say, 'I don't know.'
All right approaches begin with this 'I don't know'. If you 'know' anything already
without knowing, if you are knowledgeable, then that very belief will hinder, that very
belief will create experiences which are not true. And when you are drugged by a
belief -- and belief is like LSD or marijuana or hashish -- when you are drugged by a
belief, it creates its own projected world, it gives your imagination free play. And
when your imagination starts playing around you, you are no longer part of reality,
you have created a separate private world; you are an idiot.
That is the meaning of the word 'idiot': one who lives in a private world, who has his
own reality, who has completely broken away from the real, whose imagination has
become so real to him that reality has simply disappeared from his vision. And that's
what happens when you take LSD or marijuana or other kinds of drugs. It creates a
small fantasy world in you, very colourful -- at least it looks colourful when you are
lost in the drug. And when you are in the drug, all that you experience appears to be
ultimate truth.
Every day somebody or other comes to me and he says, 'It is through drugs that I
became aware how beautiful the world is.' What you became aware of is only your
dream world. Drugs simply take away your critical faculty. Drugs only drug your
reason and then your dream world opens all its doors and flows in all directions. And
when there is no critical faculty functioning, when there is no reason functioning and
the imagination has full play and absolute autonomous power, it feels as if it is the
ultimate truth. It is not. It has nothing to do with truth.
Truth is available only to those who are completely undrugged -- not only chemically,
but religiously too -- who are COMPLETELY undrugged. Only they have the capacity
to know the truth.
I have heard...
Under the influence of nitrous oxide, the great psychologist, William James, came to
an ultimate 'truth'. He was one of the first experimenters -- and in those days there
were no drug people around.
Under the influence of nitrous oxide, he felt that he had stumbled upon the ultimate
truth. He was a great psychologist, and a great philosopher too, but he did one thing
that very few people do: he immediately wrote it in his notebook. He still had that
much sense to know that something of immense value had risen in his consciousness
and it had to be written down immediately. Who knows? -- once he was out of the
drug experience he might forget it. So he wrote it down and he waited for the moment
when the drug and its impact should disappear so that he could read what ultimate
truth he had come upon. He was thinking that he had become a Buddha or a Christ,
seen God or seen something which the seers of the Upanishads saw, or Lao Tzu, or
Zarathustra, or Mohammed -- something, but of that importance.
But he was very puzzled and surprised when he came back to his senses and looked at
his notebook. What he had written was this:
'Hogamous, Higamous,
Man is polygamous.
Higamous, Hogamous,
Woman is monogamous.'
This was the 'ultimate truth' that he had stumbled upon.
Any absurd thing can look ultimate when you are not in your senses, when the reason
is not functioning, when the critical faculty has completely gone to sleep -- any stupid
thing. But in that moment it is not stupid, in that moment it looks like the ultimate
truth.
Aldous Huxley says that when he first took LSD, he was sitting in a very ordinary
room where just in front of him was a very ordinary chair. Once LSD started working
into his system, into his chemistry, the chair started looking so beautiful that he could
not believe his eyes. He had never seen anything so beautiful in his life. It was
luminous: light was flowing from the chair in all directions, multicoloured,
psychedelic. The chair is the same chair, it is just your imagination which is creating
the whole game. It is just that LSD has driven you mad; it has taken away all
possibility of being critical.
That's why I say belief is against doubt, but trust is not against doubt. Trust grows
through doubt. Belief grows by repressing doubt. That's why belief is a kind of drug.
That's exactly what the drug does, it represses your doubting faculty, which only
keeps you alert to not becoming an idiot, to not falling a victim of your own
imagination. And that's what religions have been doing down the ages. They say:
Don't doubt. Doubt, and you will fall in hell. Believe. If doubt comes, repress it, throw
it away. Just go on believing. And believing, they say, is seeing. If you believe, you
will see.
Trust is a totally different phenomenon. It comes out of an undrugged consciousness,
an open consciousness, neither believing nor disbelieving, with no conclusions
tethered to it -- just free, innocent.
Doubt remains useful. Until you arrive at truth doubt helps. Doubt is a friend of trust.
The very process of doubt helps you not to become a victim of your imagination;
otherwise, imagination has been playing havoc.
For example, if you are a born Hindu and you have been reading about KUNDALINI,
then your imagination can create the whole experience. Any day the snake will start
uncoiling from down the spine and with a great hushing sound it will rush towards the
seventh CHAKRA. And the experience will look so real that you cannot doubt it if
you have ever believed in it. But Jesus never came across KUNDALINI, Mohammed
never knew anything about it. Even Buddha, who was born a Hindu... But because he
was a man of sincere inquiry and had dropped all kinds of belief he never came across
KUNDALINI. Mahavir never knew anything about it, Zarathustra has not talked
about it.
So what happened? Did they miss? It is a belief. If you believe in seven CHAKRAS,
those seven CHAKRAS will become facts in your life. If you believe in anything, you
will start seeing it.
Gopi Krishna, who has become a propounder of KUNDALINI energy in the modern
age, says he was working for thirteen years, sitting and waiting for the KUNDALINI
to arise. Thirteen years is a long time. If for thirteen years you can believe in
KUNDALINI and you can wait and you can go on looking deep down into the spine,
it is not a miracle if it happens.
Then one day it happened: the serpent uncoiled himself, rushed with great energy, and
with a sound, the roaring sound of a waterfall, penetrated the brain. And since then
Gopi Krishna thinks that his genius has been released. He thinks that if your
KUNDALINI rises you will become a genius. But I don't see what his genius has
done. Yes, he writes some stupid poetry, very ordinary, fourth-rate. If that is genius
then it will be good if people keep their KUNDALINI deep down, repressed. If
everybody becomes a fourth-rate poet, that will not be a good situation. What kind of
genius is released?
These are not the ways, these are just imaginings. And if you believe in a certain thing,
you will start seeing it -- that is the danger. Don't start with belief.
That is the vision of Tao: inquire, experiment, and wait for the conclusion to come on
its own.
The sutras.
Master Lu-tsu said: WHEN THE LIGHT IS MADE TO MOVE IN A CIRCLE, ALL
THE ENERGIES OF HEAVEN AND EARTH, OF THE LIGHT AND THE DARK,
ARE CRYSTALLIZED.
Your consciousness is flowing outward -- this is a fact, there is nothing to believe in it.
When you look at an object, your consciousness flows towards the object.
For example, you are looking at me. Then you forget yourself, you become focused
on me. Then your energy flows towards me, then your eyes are arrowed towards me.
This is extroversion. You see a flower and you are enchanted, and you become
focused on the flower. You become oblivious of yourself, you are only attentive to the
beauty of the flower.
This we know -- every moment it is happening. A beautiful woman passes by and
suddenly your energy starts following her. We know this outward flow of light. This is
only half of the story. But each time the light flows out, you fall into the background,
you become oblivious of yourself.
The light has to flow back so that you are both the subject and the object at the same
time, simultaneously, so that you see yourself. Then self-knowledge is released.
Ordinarily, we live only in this half way -- half-alive, half-dead, that's the situation.
And slowly slowly light goes on flowing outward and never returns. You become
more and more empty inside, hollow. You become a black hole.
This is exactly what happens on a greater scale in the universe. Physicists have now
discovered black holes. Taoists discovered black holes long before, but they were not
concerned about the black holes there in the faraway space, they were concerned
about the black holes inside you. A black hole is a state when all your energy is spent,
exhausted, and you have become empty and you have forgotten completely how to go
on nourishing this source of energy. Scientists say that sooner or later this sun will
become a black hole, because continuous energy is being released but nothing is
returning to it. It is an immense source of energy. For millions of years it has been
giving light to the solar system. For millions of years trees have been growing,
flowers flowering, man living, animals moving, birds flying, because of the sun's
energy. But the sun is becoming spent. Slowly slowly, one day it will collapse; there
will be no more energy left. Suddenly all light will disappear, the last rays will
disappear from it. Then it will be a black hole.
And that's how many people live their life: they become black holes because of this
constant extroversion. You see this, you see that, you are continuously seeing without
ever returning the energy to the seer. In the day you see the world, in the night you see
dreams, but you go on remaining constantly attached to objects. This is dissipating
energy.
By the time a man is thirty he is almost finished; then he is a black hole. People die
nearabout thirty, although they are buried nearabout seventy -- that is another matter -but they die nearabout thirty. And I see a grain of truth in the hippie idea: don't believe
a man above thirty. There is a grain of truth in it, because it is very rare to find a man
beyond thirty who is alive. People become black holes, spent, utterly exhausted. They
go on dragging somehow; they live without being alive, as if just the momentum of
the past helps them to remain alive.
It happens: if you love bicycling, you have to pedal the bicycle. But sometimes you
can just stop pedalling and out of the momentum created by the past pedalling the
bicycle goes on for a while without pedalling. And if it is a downward slope, it can go
far. And after thirty or thirty-five it is a downward slope. Thirty-five is the peak; if
seventy is the average age, then thirty-five is the peak. After thirty-five you are on a
downward slope; you can go on rolling down without any energy .
The Taoist experience is that this energy that you spend in your extroversion can be
more and more crystallized rather than spent if you learn the secret science of turning
it backwards. It is possible; that is the whole science of all methods of concentration.
Just standing before a mirror some day, try one small experiment. You are looking at
the mirror, your own face in the mirror, your own eyes in the mirror. This is
extroversion: you are looking into the mirrored face -- your own face, of course, but it
is an object outside you. Then, for a moment, reverse the whole process. Start feeling
that you are being looked at by the reflection in the mirror -- not that you are looking
at the reflection but the reflection is looking at you -- and you will be in a very strange
space. Just try it for a few minutes and you will be very alive, and something of
immense power will start entering you. You may even become frightened because you
have never known it; you have never seen the complete circle of energy.
And although it is not mentioned in Taoist scriptures this seems to me the most simple
experiment anybody can do, and very easily. Just standing before the mirror in your
bathroom, first look into the reflection: you are looking and the reflection is the object.
Then change the whole situation, reverse the process. Start feeling that you are the
reflection and the reflection is looking at you. And immediately you will see a change
happening, a great energy moving towards you. In the beginning it may be frightening
because you have never done it and you have never known it; it will look crazy. You
may feel shaken, a trembling may arise in you, or you may feel disorientated, because
your whole orientation up to now has been extroversion. Introversion has to be
learned slowly slowly. But the circle is complete. And if you do it for a few days you
will be surprised how much more alive you feel the whole day.Just a few minutes
standing before the mirror and letting the energy come back to you so the circle is
complete... And whenever the circle is complete there is a great silence. The
incomplete circle creates restlessness. When the circle is complete it creates rest, it
makes you centred. And to be centred is to be powerful -- the power is yours. And this
is just an experiment; then you can try it in many ways.
Looking at the rose flower, first look at the rose flower for a few moments, a few
minutes, and then start the reverse process: the rose flower is looking at you. And you
will be surprised how much energy the rose flower can give to you. And the same can
be done with trees and the stars and with people. And the best way is to do it with the
woman or man you love. Just look into each other's eyes. First begin looking at the
other and then start feeling the other returning the energy to you; the gift is coming
back. You will feel replenished, you will feel showered, bathed, basked in a new kind
of energy. You will come out of it rejuvenated, vitalized.
Master Lu-tsu said: WHEN THE LIGHT IS MADE TO MOVE IN A CIRCLE...
This is what they mean by moving light in a circle. Your light is moving in an are, it
simply goes out and never comes back. You become a black hole sooner or later. If the
circle is complete you will become a white hole. Now, after black holes, physics is
discovering white holes too. A white hole is very pregnant with energy just the
opposite of the black hole.
WHEN THE LIGHT IS MADE TO MOVE IN A CIRCLE, ALL THE ENERGIES OF
HEAVEN AND EARTH...
Heaven and earth mean inner and outer, above and below, God and the world, the
invisible and the visible, the unknowable and the knowable. Heaven represents God
and the earth represents the manifested world. They become one when the circle is
complete. Then you are not only 'dust to dust'; something of the sky has penetrated
you. Then you are no longer just earthly, no more just a human being; you have
become divine.
Remember the root of the word 'human': it comes from 'humus', humus means the
earth. Man is made of the earth, that's why man is called human. Man is dust, hence
he is called human. When the dust starts becoming luminous with the divine, then you
know the splendour of life. And that is possible if the energy comes back. And it can
be brought back from everywhere; there is no problem in it, you just have to practise
the secret. And once you have got the knack of it, you will find it everywhere.
Looking at a green tree you can be so alive -- as if the whole sap of the tree has flown
towards you, the whole juice of the tree has gone into your being. Looking at the
moon, and you will be surprised: there is no need to get drunk with any alcohol or any
other drug, with the moon you can become a drunkard. The moon can return so much
energy if you know how to take it back.
In India, in the ancient Rig Veda, there is talk of SOMA. Scientists think that SOMA
IS something like LSD. Scientists think it must have been a kind of mushroom that
has disappeared from the Himalayas because of the change in the climate or
something. Or maybe it has not disappeared, maybe people have just forgotten about
it. It may be still growing somewhere in the deep valleys of the Himalayas and we
have simply forgotten what it is. Maybe the ancient seers knowingly helped humanity
to forget about it; it may have proved too dangerous.
Aldous Huxley says that SOMA was the ultimate drug, and in the future when we will
have discovered the ultimate LSD we will again call it SOMA. But you will be
surprised to know that in Sanskrit SOMA IS another name for moon. Hence, Monday
in Hindi is called SOMWAR, the day of the moon. SOMA IS another name for the
moon. It is not a mushroom, it is not some kind of LSD, it is not a drug, it is a secret
science of getting in communion with the moon. And just as the ocean is affected by
the moon, if you can get the energy back from the moon, you will be surprised: great
juice, great nectar, showers on you. You can be drunk without getting drunk on any
drug.
The moon can affect you to the very core of your being. And it will make you cool
and calm, because the moon is the feminine energy. Just as when you embrace a
woman that you love and suddenly you feel great calm and quietude arising in you,
exactly the same happens on a greater scale when energy returns to you from the
moon.
The moon is the feminine principle, just as the sun is the masculine principle. The
moon is yin, the sun is yang. The moon can mother you. There is no need to go in
search to the Himalayan valleys for some mushroom, that mushroom is always there
in the sky; it is the moon. You have to learn the secret of how to get energy back from
the moon.
There have been secret methods to get energy from the moon and from the sun too.
Sun worship was born out of a certain technique; great temples of the sun arose. The
sun temple of Konarak was just an expression of gratitude to the sun. It was not just
worship, it was a science -- how to get yang energy in you. It is particularly good for
women to get sun energy in them so that their hidden, dormant yang becomes active,
and it is good for men to get moon energy so that their dormant feminine principle
becomes alive, moving again. It is good for a woman to be a sun worshipper and good
for a man to be a moon worshipper.
But the worship has not to be just a ritual, it has to be this method.
WHEN THE LIGHT IS MADE TO MOVE IN A CIRCLE, ALL THE ENERGIES OF
HEAVEN AND EARTH, OF THE LIGHT AND THE DARK, ARE
CRYSTALLIZED.
Light and dark symbolize man/woman, light/heavy, grace/ gravitation, life/death,
movement/rest. All these things are represented by light and dark.
In short, if the energy can move in a circle, slowly slowly you will not know who you
are -- whether a man or a woman. Extroversion is the principle of yang, introversion
is the principle of yin. Man is naturally extrovert, woman is naturally introvert. Even
while making love, man keeps his eyes open -- he wants to see, he is a voyeur. Hence
the possibility of pornography. No woman is interested in pornography -- no woman
sees any point in it. Even while making love to her beloved, she closes her eyes. She
is an introvert, her energy moves inwardly.
But the energy has to become a circle, otherwise one remains a man, one remains a
woman. And both are half, two halves of the same whole. Hence the attraction and the
need for the other. The day you are able to circulate your energy in a circle you will
not need another woman, you will not need another man, because your own man, your
own woman will meet and merge into each other. You will be whole; and to be whole
is to be holy.
This is Tao and this is Tantra too: to be whole is to be holy.
WHEN THE LIGHT IS MADE TO MOVE IN A CIRCLE, ALL THE ENERGIES OF
HEAVEN AND EARTH, OF THE LIGHT AND THE DARK, ARE
CRYSTALLIZED.
This is what Carl Gustav Jung called 'individuation', crystallization. This is what
George Gurdjieff used to call 'the birth of the self' or 'the soul' .
Ordinarily you are just fragments, ordinarily you are a crowd; you have many selves.
You don't have a single 'I', you have many 'I's, small 'I's, and all struggling and
competing with each other to dominate. This is the misery of man: that he is many.
How can you be at ease if you are many? One part says, 'Do this,' another part says,
'No,' and a third part says, 'Do something else.'
Whichever you follow you will repent of, because the other parts which were not
willing to go will create trouble. They will go on insisting that you are on the wrong
path, that the other alternative would have been far better. 'If you had followed me,
you would have arrived by now. And look, you didn't listen to me.' But if you had
listened to that part, then the other parts would have taken revenge.
Man is never contented, he cannot be, because he is many. If you become one,
contentment follows of its own accord. If you are many, discontent is natural. If you
are many, you live in constant conflict. If you are one, conflict disappears; you have
come home.
This is what Taoists call crystallization. And the method to achieve it is to make the
light move in a circle so your yin and yang are no longer separate.
The light has to move just exactly as your breathing moves: in and out, out and in,
you exhale, you inhale. Just think of a person who only exhales: he will not be able to
live, his body will die. Or think of the person who only inhales: he will also die. And
that's exactly what has happened to your soul. Your soul is dead, because either you
exhale light or you inhale light; you have not yet learned that exhalation and
inhalation have to become a circle, one process. Exhale deeply and inhale deeply.
Just as breath is necessary for the life of the body, consciousness is necessary for the
soul. So consciousness should not be left as a half, the circle should be completed.
The woman has to learn how to be a man too, and the man has to learn how to be a
woman too. And when the man and the woman have come to an equal balance, when
they are utterly balanced, that is crystallization, individuation; the soul is born.
WHEN ONE BEGINS TO APPLY THIS MAGIC...
And, yes, it is magic, because its effects are really unbelievable.
WHEN ONE BEGINS TO APPLY THIS MAGIC IT IS AS IF, IN THE MIDDLE OF
BEING, THERE WERE NON-BEING.
This is what I meant by 'black hole'.
WHEN ONE BEGINS TO APPLY THIS MAGIC IT IS AS IF, IN THE MIDDLE OF
BEING, THERE WERE NON-BEING.
... as if you are surrounded by being, but you are an island of non-being, of
nothingness -- a black hole. The trees are alive, the stars are alive, the birds are alive,
the earth is alive, the sun and the moon are alive, everything is alive, and you... just a
dead black hole. In this vast ocean of being you are a non-being. This is the situation
when you begin.
WHEN IN THE COURSE OF TIME THE WORK IS COMPLETED, AND
BEYOND THE BODY THERE IS A BODY, IT IS AS IF, IN THE MIDDLE OF
NON-BEING, THERE WERE BEING.
Then everything changes; then you become a being, a white hole. You become so
integrated, so crystallized, that compared to you, all the suns and the moons and the
trees and the birds and the animals look like non-being.
Just think of a Buddha: he has being, the whole existence feels pale compared to him.
He has life, life eternal, life abundant. The whole existence is poor, he is rich. He is an
emperor, the whole existence is beggarly.
WHEN IN THE COURSE OF TIME THE WORK IS COMPLETED, AND
BEYOND THE BODY THERE IS A BODY...
When this circle of light becomes stabilized in you, crystallized in you, you will start
feeling another body within the body.
This body is made of dust, that body is made of God, of divinity. This body has form,
that body has no form. This body is gross, that body is subtle. This body will have to
die, that body knows no death. This body is part of time, that body is part of eternity.
When this second body is born -- and it can be born only when you have learned how
to inhale and exhale light... Just as you are inhaling and exhaling breath, when you
have learned how to inhale and exhale light -- the second body, the body of light...
This is the body of darkness, this is the body which is part of the earth, part of
gravitation. It is heavy, it is pulled downwards. The other body is pulled upwards, it is
part of grace, it is light -- light in both senses of the word -- it is illumined and it is
weightless. You can fly.
That's what Zen people call 'flying without wings'. Then the whole sky and the
infinity of it is available to you.
... AS IF, IN THE MIDDLE OF NON-BEING THERE WERE BEING. ONLY
AFTER CONCENTRATED WORK OF A HUNDRED DAYS WILL THE LIGHT
BE GENUINE.
In the beginning the light will look almost like imagination -- in the beginning it has
to be imagination. Only after a time, a hundred days, the CONCENTRATED WORK
OF A HUNDRED DAYS... It depends on how concentrated your work is; a hundred
days is not a fixed time. If your work is totally concentrated, then a hundred days,
otherwise it will take a hundred years or a hundred lives, one knows not. It depends
on the intensity. If your being is totally involved in it, committed to it, you are bent
upon it, you are ready to risk all for it, then in one hundred days the light will become
genuine. In the beginning it will be imagination.
Imagination is not wrong; imagination is wrong only when it takes you against reality,
when it becomes a barrier. Imagination is not wrong when it cooperates with reality,
then it is a great blessing. In the beginning you will feel it as imaginary -- just looking
in the mirror, you will feel, 'This is all imagination, that the reflection is looking at
me.' It IS imagination in the beginning, but soon you will realize that it was not
imagination, you were just turning the key in the lock of reality. It starts happening.
In the beginning, if you touch a tree with great love -- you know the tree cannot
respond -- and if you feel some response from the tree, you will think it is imagination.
It is not; the tree responds, but it will take a little time for you to recognize the truth of
it. When you are loving, the tree responds with love -- love is always responded to
with love. And if love is not responded to with love, then know well your love is not
love, that's all; then something else is masquerading as love.
... THEN ONLY WILL IT BECOME SPIRIT-FIRE.
After a hundred days' concentrated effort it will become spirit-fire.
AFTER A HUNDRED DAYS THERE DEVELOPS BY ITSELF IN THE MIDST OF
THE LIGHT A POINT OF THE TRUE LIGHT-POLE.
First it is a diffused light; you just feel it very slightly there. Sometimes it is there and
sometimes it is not there; it is very dim and very fragile. But slowly slowly it becomes
very centred. It becomes a light-pole.
THEN SUDDENLY THERE DEVELOPS THE SEED-PEARL.
Then, just at the very centre of the light-pole, the seed-pearl.
IT IS AS IF A MAN AND WOMAN EMBRACED AND A CONCEPTION TOOK
PLACE.
And it is exactly so: the inner man and the inner woman have embraced. It is a kind of
inner intercourse -- it is real Tantra. Your feminine part and your masculine part are
making love to each other, are joined together. And then there is no need for them to
separate.
With the outer woman you will have to separate, otherwise it will become very ugly.
With the outer woman you will have to separate, otherwise it will become repulsive.
With the outer man you will have to separate; it can only be momentary -- only for a
moment can you have the glimpse of unity. But with the inner there is no need to
separate.
A Buddha lives in a constant orgasmic state: the inner woman and the inner man go
on making love. You must have seen the SHIVALINGA in Hindu temples; that is a
symbol. Just below that LINGA IS the YONI, the feminine part; it is a symbol of the
inner man and woman meeting. It is not just phallic as Freudians will interpret it, it is
symbolic; it symbolizes the inner polarity.
And once this meeting has happened, you are born anew. When Jesus says to
Nicodemus, 'Unless you are born again...' this is what he means. I don't know what
Christians say and I don't care either, but this is what he means. 'Unless you are born
again...'. This is the birth he means. And this is what Hindus call DWIJA, twice-born:
you have given birth to yourself. If the outer man meets with the outer woman you
create a child, you reproduce. If the inner man meets the inner woman you again
create a child, but you are the parent and you are the child. A new life begins in you,
the life of a Buddha, the life of enlightenment, the life of deathlessness.
THEN ONE MUST BE QUITE STILL AND WAIT...
When this conception has been felt inside, when you feel that the inner man has
penetrated the inner woman and the woman is pregnant, then nothing is left but to
wait. Just as the woman waits for nine months with great joy, with great prayer, with
great hope, you wait. Nothing else has to be done -- no need to do anything -- the
doing part is finished.
The male part is action. To make light circulate is the male part. Once the conception
has taken place and the inner woman is pregnant, then the male part need not work, it
has to rest. Then things grow on their own.
Meditation is the first part, then there is only prayer left. Hence I say to you that
without meditation you will never know what prayer is. Prayer is the highest form of
meditation. Prayer is like fragrance, meditation is like the flower. One has to go
through meditations.
People ask me why, if their path is that of prayer, are they supposed to do so many
meditations here in my ashram. Prayer will come; you have to pave the way for it to
come. You have to go through all kinds of meditations -- these are cleansing processes.
This is the male part of you that has to be satisfied, and then the female part will take
possession; you will be pregnant.
And to be pregnant is to be prayerful, because then nothing is left to be done. Effort is
finished and now you are effortless. This is what Taoists call 'inaction through action'.
You have been doing many experiments on moving the light in a circle, you have
succeeded after a long concentrated effort; something has crystallized in you -- the
man and woman are no more separate, they have become one -- the child is there.
Now, except for waiting, nothing is needed. Wait with hope, wait with trust. And this
is what prayer is.
IN THE MIDST OF THE PRIMAL TRANSFORMATION, THE RADIANCE OF
THE LIGHT IS THE DETERMINING THING.
And what will make you alert that the pregnancy has happened? You will start seeing
an inner radiance. Whenever you close your eyes you will not see darkness but
radiance. And not only will you see it, those who love you -- they will start seeing an
aura around you.
IN THE MIDST OF THE PRIMAL TRANSFORMATION, THE RADIANCE OF
THE LIGHT IS THE DETERMINING THING.
How do you know that a woman is pregnant? Have you not seen a certain aura around
a pregnant woman? Have you not seen some light coming out of her eyes, her face,
her very being? It is exactly the same, but on a much higher plane, when you are
pregnant with God within you. You will see radiance. Whenever you close your eyes
you will be all light inside, a sourceless light, coming from nowhere, very cool light,
moonlight, but immensely enchanting, magical.
And others who love you and are very close to you will also start feeling it. That's
why we draw an aura around the pictures of saints: it is not available to everybody. If
you had seen Christ you would not have seen his aura, but his disciples saw it.
Certainly the people who crucified him didn't see that aura. They could not see; they
were blind, they were closed. The aura was seen around Buddha -- by the disciples.
These secrets are available only to lovers. They are such intimate secrets that they are
not available to all and sundry, to any Torn, Dick and Harry. They are only available
to those who are intimate, those who come close, close, closer and closer, and those
who are open, vulnerable.
IN THE MIDST OF THE PRIMAL TRANSFORMATION, THE RADIANCE OF
THE LIGHT IS THE DETERMINING THING. IN THE PHYSICAL WORLD IT IS
THE SUN; IN MAN, THE EYE.
And when the inner radiance starts growing in you, the eyes become aflame, they look
drunk. There is a dance in the eyes -- a subtle light, a totally different quality comes to
the eyes. Now the eyes not only see things, but they share too.
Tao cannot be divided, but it can be shared. And the sharing of Tao is through the
eyes.
When I initiate you into sannyas, I ask you to look at me. I want to look into your
eyes, I want my eyes to dig deep into your eyes, to have a contact there, because
behind your two eyes is hidden the third eye. If the third eye is contacted -- and if you
are open it happens within a split second, time is not needed -- if the third eye is
contacted, I know a disciple has come. If it is not contacted, then I only hope that you
will become a disciple some day. In that hope I give you sannyas. But that is a hope; it
may be fulfilled, it may not be fulfilled -- it will depend on a thousand and one things.
But when I see a disciple, when the third eye immediately starts responding to me,
then you have come to the place you have been seeking and searching for. Now there
will be no need to go anywhere, now you will not need any Master, any teaching. You
have come home.
THIS ENERGY IS DIRECTED OUTWARD (POWS DOWNWARD).
Ordinarily, the energy that is coming from the eyes flows outward. 'Outward' and
'downward' are synonymous.
THEREFORE THE WAY OF THE GOLDEN FLOWER DEPENDS WHOLLY ON
THE BACKWARD-FLOWING METHOD.
Ordinarily the energy is going outward and downward. You have to bring it backward,
inward -- and 'inward' is synonymous with 'upward'. Once it starts coming back to you
and you become a circle of energy, you will be surprised: a new dimension has
opened up; you start moving upwards. Your life is no longer horizontal, it has taken a
new route, the vertical.
God exists on the vertical route. You will not come across him in the world -- not that
he is not in the world, but unless you are moving vertically, you will not come across
him. Just as a blind man cannot see light, the horizontal man cannot see God.
Many come to me and say, 'If you show us God, we will believe.' But how can I show
you God? How can I show a blind man light unless he is prepared to go through the
treatment so that his eyes open?
I will have to turn you from your horizontal way of life into a vertical way of life.
That's what sannyas is all about: a vertical way of being. And once the light starts
moving upwards, the Golden Flower opens up.
These are symbols; there is no flower inside you. 'Flower' simply represents flowering,
'golden' simply represents its light-fulness, its radiance.
THE CIRCULATION OF THE LIGHT IS NOT ONLY A FANTASY.
Remember: the circulation of the light is not only a fantasy. In the beginning it may
appear so -- you will have to be patient -- soon it becomes a fact. It is a fact, it is a fact
from the very beginning, but just because you have never been in contact with it, in
the beginning it looks like a fantasy.
BY CONCENTRATING THE THOUGHTS, ONE CAN FLY; BY
CONCENTRATING THE DESIRES, ONE FALLS.
Desire is the Taoist name for energy moving downward. 'Outward' and 'thought' is the
Taoist symbol for energy moving inward. So don't misunderstand. By 'thought',
Taoists don't mean your so-called thoughts, by 'thought' they mean thought-energy
purified of desire. If it is purified of desire and all desire has disappeared, then there is
no need to go out, because you go out only because you are desirous of something.
You desire a house, you desire money, you desire power, you desire a man, a woman,
this and that, then you go out. If there is no desire, thought need not go out; it starts
turning inwards -- the one-hundred-and-eighty-degree turn happens.
Desireless thought is inward-moving, desireful thought is outward-moving. Hence the
insistence of all the Buddhas on desirelessness.
WHEN A PUPIL TAKES LITTLE CARE OF HIS THOUGHTS AND MUCH CARE
OF HIS DESIRES, HE GETS INTO THE PATH OF SUBMERSION.
When a disciple takes little care of his thought and too much care of his desires he is
drowned in the world.
ONLY THROUGH CONTEMPLATION AND QUIETNESS DOES TRUE
INTUITION ARISE: FOR THAT THE BACKWARD-FLOWING METHOD IS
NECESSARY.
Thought has to be purified of desire. Once thought is purified of desire it is
no-thought. Mind without desires is a no-mind. It is what Patanjali calls SAMADHI,
Zen people call SATORI, Taoists call crystallization: the balance of the outward and
the inward. And no energy is lost; it goes into the world and comes back, like a bird
flying in the morning out into the sky, and by the evening it comes back to the nest.
Let your energy come back to the nest again and again. Don't let it go forever without
turning it back to you. And you will become a reservoir, and you will become
tremendously powerful inwardly. Only in that power does intuition start functioning.
In that power spirit-fire is born. In that power the true light-pole arises. In that power
suddenly there develops the seed-pearl.
IT IS AS IF A MAN AND WOMAN EMBRACED AND A CONCEPTION TOOK
PLACE. THEN ONE MUST BE QUITE STILL AND WAIT.
Meditation is complete and prayer begins. To bring meditation to prayer is the whole
work of Tao.
The Secret of Secrets, Vol 1
Chapter #8
Chapter title: Real is for Always
18 August 1978 am in Buddha Hall
Archive code:
7808180
ShortTitle:
SOS108
Audio: Yes
Video:
No
Length: 101 mins
The first question:
Question 1
WOULD YOU TALK ABOUT THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN
DISILLUSIONMENT AND CELEBRATION. I'M FEELING A STRANGE
MIXTURE OF THE TWO -- A DYING AND A COMING TO LIFE AT THE SAME
TIME.
Venu Gopal, mind lives in illusions. And to live in illusions is to be miserable,
because they cannot be fulfilled. You can go on hoping but you will always be moving
into a mirage. The moment you reach the place you were hoping for, the mirage will
disappear, you will be in utter despair. Out of your despair you will again hope.
Hope is just an effort to keep oneself alive somehow. You will again create illusion.
And this is how the whole game goes on: you are in despair, out of despair you create
an illusion. Out of illusion more despair is created, and out of more despair, more
illusions. And one goes on from despair to illusion, from illusion to despair. No
energy is left to celebrate. You are in a constant tension between despair and hope.
Your life becomes nothing but a tension between that which is and that which should
be.
You cannot feel being, you remain engrossed in becoming. Becoming is misery, being
is celebration. Celebration is not because some desire is fulfilled -- no desire is ever
fulfilled. Desire as such cannot be fulfilled. Desire is only a way to avoid the present
moment. Desire creates the future and takes you far away. Desire is a drug. It keeps
you stoned, it does not allow you to see the reality -- that which is herenow.
Celebration means: dropping this whole trip of becoming and just being here. When
becoming disappears, all the smoke of becoming disappears, there is the flame of
being. And that very flame is celebration.
Celebration is without any cause. Celebration is simply because we are. We are made
out of the stuff called celebration. That's our natural state: to celebrate -- as natural as
it is for the trees to bloom, for birds to sing, for rivers to flow to the ocean.
Celebration is a natural state. It has nothing to do with your desires and their
fulfilment, with your hopes and their fulfilment; it is already the case. But to see the
celebration that is already happening at the deepest core of your being you will have
to drop becoming, you will have to understand the futility of becoming.
So something tremendously beautiful is happening, Gopal. Allow it.
Yes, it is exactly so. When you are utterly disillusioned and you don't create any more
illusions -- that is what I mean by utterly disillusioned.. . Disillusionment comes many
times in everybody's life, but out of disillusion you again create new illusions. You
cannot live without illusions; it has become a habit, a habit of many lives. You cannot
live in the reality as it is, you want it to be something else -- you are always wanting it
to be something else. And reality has no obligation to anybody to change itself. And it
is good that it doesn't bother about your desires, otherwise there will be chaos because
there are so many people desiring, projecting.
Reality remains as it is, utterly unaffected by what you desire. It never takes any
notice of your desires. But once you are absolutely disillusioned... and by 'absolute
disillusionment' I mean you no longer create any more illusions, you simply remain
with it -- even if it is despair, you remain with it. You remain in it, you accept it. The
moment you accept despair, it starts disappearing, because it can exist only as a
shadow of hope; it cannot exist on its own. You cannot just be in despair without any
illusion, that is impossible -- it is as impossible as if there were just a shadow walking
on the road. If you walk there will be a shadow, but the shadow cannot walk alone.
Despair is a shadow of illusion. If you are utterly disillusioned, despair starts
disappearing. And a new being, a fresh being, a resurrection, a celebration arises in
you.
Aniruddha has written a question saying that when he came here he was thinking
about me as vast, special, extraordinary. Now he says, 'Living here with you for so
many days, you appear ordinary, just as any other man. So what is the fuss all about?'
I have no obligation to fulfil your demands. I am just as I am, utterly ordinary. Reality
is ordinary. The rose is a rose is a rose. The rock is a rock, the river is a river. Reality
is absolutely ordinary, utterly ordinary. I am an ordinary man. Then what is the
difference between you and me? The difference is: I celebrate my ordinariness, you
don't celebrate it. That is where the difference is. I welcome it, I am utterly blissful
with it; you are not. I am a being, you are a becoming. There is the difference. Not
that I am special and you are ordinary -- that is utter nonsense -- if I am special then
everybody is special, if you are ordinary, then I am ordinary. We belong to the same
reality. I am utterly ordinary. But the difference is that I am celebrating it. I have no
grudge, I have no complaint, I am not trying to become somebody that I am not. I
have accepted myself in absoluteness -- not even a single thing do I want to change.
In this relaxation, in this acceptance, celebration has started happening to me.
Now Aniruddha says he is in a difficulty. He has created his difficulty himself. I have
never told anybody that I am special. That was your idea, your projection. And, in fact,
why was Aniruddha thinking that I am special? Deep down he wants to be special,
that's why he stayed here, seeing that 'Here is a special man, so there must be some
secrets to being special. Learn from this man so you can also become special, so you
are no longer ordinary.'
People have such condemnation for the ordinary. I have tremendous respect for it
because the ordinary is the real. God is the most ordinary thing in existence -- has to
be. How can he be special? -- compared to what, compared to whom? He alone is, he
cannot be special. He can only be ordinary, as ordinary as the rose and the peacock
and the eagle, and the river and the rock and the cloud.
But Aniruddha must have had a desire deep down to become special. People search
for Masters in order to become special. People search for Masters out of their ego
desires. The very search is an ego trip. Then, naturally, one day you will be
disillusioned. That was your illusion; I have nothing to do with it. If you project
something on me, how am I supposed to be responsible for it? You project; sooner or
later your projection will fall down. In fact, I will help in every way so that it is
broken, shattered, so that you can see me as I am, so that one day you can see yourself
too as you are.
My whole teaching is: drop all these stupid efforts to become special, extraordinary.
Just enjoy reality as it is wherever you are, whosoever you are. Celebrate it. This I call
prayer, this I call being religious: celebrating one's being. It is a gift from God. Just to
be is more than you can ask for. Just to be is the greatest miracle. What more of a
miracle can happen?
Venu Gopal, something tremendously beautiful is on the way. Don't create any more
illusions again. The mind will try. Don't listen to the mind. Remain disillusioned. It
will be a kind of dying, because you have lived up to now through illusions. That has
been your nourishment. You will feel like dying. But die; and with this death a new
life will arise in you, you will be resurrected. Let this be a death -- and a total death.
Don't die in a lukewarm way, die totally, wholly. Allow this death to happen, and the
next moment, out of this death, some new life arises that you have not seen and that
has been always within you -- but you were not available to
And to Aniruddha also I would like to say: It is very good, Aniruddha. Now you are
seeing my reality. I am an ordinary man, and I am here to make you ordinary also. I
am here to help you come out of your ego trips. I am here to help you to celebrate this
immense ordinariness. Only then are you grateful to God.
What are you trying to do? -- trying to become somebody else, trying to decorate
yourself? But all those decorations will be falsifications. You can never be anybody
else, you can only be yourself. There is no way for the rose flower to become a lotus.
There is no way for the lotus to become a rose flower. You can only be yourself. If
you allow it, there will be celebration, because there will be no possibility of misery.
And the energy that becomes misery becomes celebration. If you don't allow it to
move into becoming misery, what else will you do? It is the same energy that cries in
you -- it can become laughter. It is the same energy that becomes hate in you, sour,
bitter -- it becomes love. It is the same energy that can become destruction -- it
becomes creation. The energy is not different. When you are engaged in an ego trip of
becoming somebody special, then your whole life will be nothing but a long tragedy.
What is the difference between Alexander and a Buddha? Alexander wants to be
special, wants to possess the whole world, wants to be unique. And Buddha? -Buddha simply wants to be himself. There is no need to go anywhere, there is no need
to become at all. No future is needed. No time is required. Buddha can be this very
moment what he wants to be because he already is that. But for Alexander, even
millions of lives will not be enough. His journey will remain incomplete; he will
never be able to bring it to a conclusion. It is a vicious circle. He will be frustrated
again and again, and out of frustration he will create bigger illusions, stronger
illusions. He will need bigger illusions and stronger illusions.
It is like a drug, I say again. If you take a drug, any drug, sooner or later you become
accustomed to it. Then you need more quantities of it, stronger doses of it, and so on
and so forth. Small illusions won't do; Once you have become accustomed to them,
you will need greater illusions.
This is how people become mad. A madman is one whose illusions have gone
completely contrary to reality. Now he lives only in his illusions -- there are not even
intervals when he sees reality as it is, not even moments of truth. He simply lives in
his illusions. He is a madman. And what others are may be a lesser madness, but the
madness is there. The difference is only of degree, quantity, but not of quality. Unless
you are ready to relax into your being as you are, you are not sane.
I am ordinary, and I say to you Bud&a is ordinary. And I say to you all the Buddhas
have always been ordinary. That is their specialness, because in this world nobody
wants to be ordinary. That is their extraordinariness, because they are people who
have chosen to be ordinary. That is their humbleness. Jesus says, 'Blessed are the
meek for theirs is the kingdom of God.' By 'meek' he means exactly this: to be just
what God has meant you to be; not to aspire to anything at all; to live in a relaxed
state.
It is good, Aniruddha, that your illusion is broken. Thank me for it. Feel grateful for it,
that I have not supported your illusion at all. If you carried it for so many months it
was just your work. I was not a support to it.
But his question shows that now he thinks I am ordinary the problem is arising for
him again. Then what is he doing here? Then he should go again to somebody else
who is extraordinary. Now will be the decisive moment for him. If, seeing that I am
ordinary, he understands the beauty of being ordinary, celebration will start. If he is
feeling frustrated -- as if I had deceived him, as if I had been pretending to be
extraordinary and now he has found that I am not -- then he will have new illusions.
He will project his desires onto somebody else. He will find another screen and again
he will be frustrated. And he will need bigger and bigger doses, and sooner or later he
will be a victim of somebody who is there to exploit people, who is there to pretend
according to your illusion.
That's why I am so much against Satya Sai Baba. He is trying to help your projections.
That is my criticism of his effort. He tries to go with your projections. He is not an
independent man, he depends on you. You project and he will try to fulfil your
projections -- at least he will pretend that you are in the close vicinity of a special man
who can do miracles, who can make things appear from nowhere.
Now Aniruddha can become a victim of a man like Satya Sai Baba because then he
will think this is special; no ordinary man can do it. That's true, but ordinary
magicians ARE doing it. But these tricks are very dangerous. They are very subtle in
their exploitation. Aniruddha can easily become a victim of any charlatan, of any
deceiver. Now will be the decisive moment for him. He will have to decide either to
live with this man who is ordinary and drop all desire for extraordinariness and all
projections and to become ordinary himself and let celebration happen, or he will
have to project his illusions somewhere else.
And then you can go on and on. That's how you have been going on for centuries. For
so many lives you have been going on and on. You simply change your screen, but
you don't drop your projection. You carry your projector and your whole film of hopes,
dreams, desires. You just become frustrated with the screen -- 'This screen is not right'
-- so you find another screen. When are you going to drop the projector and the film?
When are you going to burn the whole ego trip? In that very moment death has
happened, and resurrection.
Venu Gopal, you say, 'I'm feeling a strange mixture of the two -- a dying and a coming
to life at the same time.'
That's how it will happen in the beginning: you will die a little bit and you will be
born a little bit. Learn a lesson from it: die totally so that you can be born totally. And
then you know that each moment one has to die so that each moment one again
becomes fresh, young -- is born. This can happen each moment, and a true life
consists of death-resurrection, death-resurrection. Each moment it happens, each
moment one has to die to the past. Only then does the present become available and
there is celebration, and there is great joy, and there is great flowering. The Golden
Flower blooms if you are ready to die to the past, if you are utterly in the present. And
you can be utterly in the present only if you have no desire to be anywhere else in the
future, if you have no desire to be somebody else. This I call enlightenment.
The second question:
Question 2
WHY IS LOVE SO ESSENTIAL FOR SPIRITUAL GROWTH?
Love and awareness is the highest form of polarity -- just like man/woman, life/death,
darkness/light, summer/winter, outer/ inner, yin/yang, the body and the soul, the
creation and the creator. Love and awareness is the highest form of polarity, the last
polarity, at which transcendence happens.
Love needs two. It is a relationship, it is outgoing, it is energy moving outwards.
There is an object: the beloved. The object becomes more important than yourself.
Your joy is in the object. If your beloved is happy, you are happy; you become part of
the object. There is a kind of dependence, and the other is needed. Without the other
you will feel lonely.
Awareness is just being with yourself in utter aloneness, just being alert. It is not a
relationship, the other is not needed at all. It is not outgoing, it is ingoing.
Love is the movement of the light out of your being. Awareness is the reverse
movement, the backward movement of the light to the source again, returning to the
source. This is what Jesus calls repentance -- not in the sense of repentance, but in the
sense of returning to the source. Patanjali calls it PRATYAHARA, coming back home,
Mahavir calls it PRATIKRAMAN, coming back to oneself; the circle is complete.
THE SECRET OF THE GOLDEN FLOWER IS based, totally based, on this
backward movement of your energy. But the backward movement is possible only if
you have moved forward. You have to go into love, you have to relate in order to
come to yourself. It looks paradoxical.
The child has to get lost into the world to become a child again. The innocence has to
go into all the turmoil of cunningness and calculation to become really innocent again.
A child is innocent, but his innocence is that of ignorance. A saint is also innocent, but
his innocence is not of ignorance but of experience, of ripeness, of maturity. He is
again innocent, but that again has great importance -- he cannot be distracted from his
innocence anymore. The child is bound to get distracted: every Adam has to leave the
Garden of Eden, the world of innocence. Every Adam has to go into the world, into
the mud of it, because only there will you mature, will you ripen. Only there will you
learn, only there will you see in contrast the beauty of innocence, will you understand
the splendour of innocence. The day you have learned the beauty of innocence, you
have become aware of it, you will have come back home.
The Adam cannot become Christ if he does not leave paradise; he will remain a child.
Adam means outward movement, Christ means inward movement. Adam means love,
Christ means awareness. The circle is complete. The difference between Adam and
Christ is only that of direction. Adam is going extrovertedly, and the same person,
when he turns back and becomes introverted, is Christ. Adam is the potential Christ,
Christ is the actualized Adam.
Love is very essential. You have to lose yourself to gain yourself. Love is the only
possibility of losing yourself totally. When you are lost totally, then you will be able
to remember what you have done.
It is like a fish which has always lived in the ocean. It will never become aware of the
ocean and the benediction of it. It has to be caught in a net, a fisherman has to come to
take it out, throw it on the shore. Only on the shore, in the hot sun, will it remember
for the first time. Although it lived for years in the ocean, it was oblivious, completely
oblivious, of the ocean. Now the thirst, the heat, makes it mindful of the ocean. A
great longing arises to go back to the ocean. It makes every effort to jump back into
the ocean.
That is the state of a seeker: thirsty to be back at the original source. And if this fish
can enter the ocean again... can't you imagine the celebration! And the fish has lived
in the ocean forever but there was no celebration. Now there is the possibility of
celebration. Now it will feel so delighted, so blessed.
Love is a must for spiritual growth. And, moreover, love functions as a mirror. It is
very difficult to know yourself unless you have looked at your face in the eyes of
someone who loves you. Just as you have to look into the mirror to see your physical
face, you have to look in the mirror of love to see your spiritual face. Love is a
spiritual mirror. It nourishes you, it integrates you, it makes you ready for the inner
journey, it reminds you of your original face.
In moments of deep love there are glimpses of the original face, although those
glimpses are coming as reflections. Just as on a full moon night you see the moon
reflected in the lake, in the silent lake, so love functions as a lake. The moon reflected
in the lake is the beginning of the search for the real moon. If you have never seen the
moon reflected in the lake you may never search for the real moon. You will go again
and again into the lake to search for the moon because in the beginning you will think,
'This is where the real moon is, somewhere deep down at the bottom of the lake.' You
will dive again and again and you will come up empty-handed; you will not find the
moon there.
Then one day it will dawn on you that maybe this moon is just a reflection. That is a
great insight. Then you can look upwards. Then where is the moon if this is a
reflection? If it is a reflection you have to look in the opposite direction. The
reflection was there, deep in the lake -- the real must be somewhere above the lake.
For the first time you look upwards and the journey has started.
Love gives you glimpses of meditation, reflections of the moon in the lake -- although
they are reflections, not true. So love can never satisfy you. In fact, love will make
you more and more dissatisfied, discontented. Love will make you more and more
aware of what is possible, but it will not deliver the goods. It will frustrate you; and
only in deep frustration -- the possibility of turning back to your own being. Only
lovers know the joy of meditation. Those who have never loved and have never been
frustrated in love, those who have never dived into the lake of love in search of the
moon and are never frustrated, will never look up to the real moon in the sky; they
will never become aware of it.
The person who loves is bound to become religious sooner or later. But the person
who does not love -- the politician, for example, who cannot love any person, he loves
only power -- will never become religious. Or the person who is obsessed with money,
who loves only money, who knows only one love -- love of money, will never become
religious. It will be very difficult for him for so many reasons. Money can be
possessed; you can have money and you can possess it. It is easy to possess money, it
is difficult to possess a beloved -- impossible, in fact. You will try to possess, but how
can you possess a living person? The living person will resist in every way, will fight
to the last. Nobody wants to lose their freedom.
Love is not as valuable as freedom is. Love is a great value, but not higher than
freedom. So one would like to be loving, but one would not like to be imprisoned by
love. Hence, sooner or later you become frustrated. You try to possess, and the more
you try to possess, the more impossible love becomes and the more the other starts
going away from you. The less you possess, the closer you feel to the other. If you
don't possess at all, if there is freedom flowing between the lovers, there is great love.
Firstly, the effort to possess a person is bound to fail: in that frustration you will be
thrown back on yourself. Secondly, if you have learned not to possess the person, if
you have learned that freedom is a higher value than love, a far more superior value
than love, then sooner or later you will see: freedom will bring you to yourself,
freedom will become your awareness, meditation.
Freedom is another aspect of meditation. Either start with freedom and you will
become aware, or start with awareness and you will become free. They go together.
Love is a kind of subtle bondage -- they go together -- but it is an essential experience,
very essential for maturity.
There is a beautiful definition of realness through love in Margery William's beautiful
book THE VELVETEEN RABBIT.
'What is REAL?' asked the Rabbit one day. 'Does it mean having that buzz inside of
you, and a stick-out handle?'
'REAL isn't how you were made,' said the Skin Horse. 'It's a thing that happens to you.
When a child loves you for a long time, not just to play with, but really loves you,
then you become REAL.
'Does it hurt?' asked the Rabbit.
'Sometimes,' said the Skin Horse, for he was always truthful. 'When you are REAL,
you don't mind being hurt.'
'Does it happen all at once like being wound up,' he asked, 'or bit by bit?'
'It doesn't happen all at once.' said the Skin Horse. 'You become. It takes a long time.
That's why it doesn't often happen to people who break easily, or have sharp edges or
who have to be carefully kept. Generally, by the time you are REAL, most of your
hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in the joints and
very shabby. But these things don't matter at all, because once you are REAL, you
can't be ugly, except to people who don't understand... Once you are REAL, you can't
become unreal again. It lasts for always.'
Love makes you real; otherwise you remain just a fantasy, a dream, with no substance
in it. Love gives you substance, love gives you integrity, loves makes you centred. But
it is only half of the journey; the other half has to be completed in meditation, in
awareness. But love prepares you for the other half. Love is the beginning half and
awareness is the ending half. Between these two you attain to God. Between love and
awareness, between these two banks, the river of being flows.
Don't avoid love. Go through it, with all its pains. Yes, it hurts, but if you are in love it
doesn't matter. In fact, all those hurts strengthen you. Sometimes it really hurts badly,
terribly, but all those wounds are necessary to provoke you, to challenge you, to make
you less sleepy. All those dangerous situations are necessary to make you alert. Love
prepares the ground, and in the soil of love the seed of meditation can grow -- and
only in the soil of love.
So those who escape from the world out of fear will never attain to meditation. They
can sit in the Himalayan caves for lives together, they will not attain to meditation. It
is not possible -- they have not earned it. First it has to be earned in the world; first
they have to prepare the soil. And it is only love that prepares the soil.
Hence my insistence for my sannyasins not to renounce the world. Be in it, take its
challenge, accept its dangers, its hurts, wounds. Go through it. Don't avoid it, don't try
to find a short-cut because there is none. It is a struggle, it is arduous, it is an uphill
task, but that is how one reaches the peak.
And the joy will be more, far more, than if you were dropped on the peak by a
helicopter, because you will have reached there ungrown; you will not be able to
enjoy it. Just think of the difference... You try hard to reach Everest. It is so dangerous
-- every possibility of dying on the way, every possibility of never reaching to the
peak; hazardous, dangerous; death waiting for you at each step; so many traps and so
many possibilities of being defeated rather than being successful. Out of one hundred
possibilities there is only one possibility that you may reach. But the closer you come
to the peak, the higher the joy rises in you. Your spirit soars high. You earn it; it is not
free. And the more you have paid for it, the more you will enjoy it. Then think: you
can be dropped from a helicopter on the top. You will stand on the top and you will
just look silly, stupid -- what are you doing here? Within five minutes you will be
finished, you will say, 'So I have seen it! There is nothing much here!'
The journey creates the goal. The goal is not sitting there at the end of the journey, the
journey creates it at each step. The journey is the goal. The journey and the goal are
not separate, they are not two things. The end and the means are not two things. The
end is spread over all the way; all the means contain the end in them.
So never miss any opportunity of living, of being alive, of being responsible, of being
committed, of getting involved. Don't be a coward. Face life, encounter it. And then
slowly slowly something inside you will crystallize.
Yes, it takes time. The Skin Horse is right: 'Generally, by the time you are REAL,
most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in the
joints and very shabby. But these things don't matter at all, because once you are
REAL, you can't be ugly, except to people who don't understand... Once you are
REAL, you can't become unreal again. It lasts for always.' It is forever.
But one has to earn it. Let me repeat it: in life you cannot get anything free. And if
you do get it, it is useless. You have to pay, and the more you pay for it the more you
will get out of it. If you can risk your whole life in love, great will be your attainment.
Love will send you back to yourself; it will give you a few reflections of meditation.
The first glimpses of meditation happen in love. And then a great desire arises in you
to attain to those glimpses, not only as glimpses but as states, so that you can live in
those states forever and forever. Love gives you the taste of meditation.
A loving orgasmic experience is the first experience of SAMADHI, of ecstasy. It will
make you more thirsty. Now you will know what is possible and now you cannot be
satisfied with the mundane. The sacred has penetrated you, the sacred has reached
your heart. God has touched your heart, you have felt that touch. Now you would like
to live in that moment forever, you would like that moment to become your whole life.
It does become -- and unless it becomes man remains discontented.
Love on the one hand will give you great joy and on the other hand will give you a
thirst for eternal joy.
The third question:
Question 3
WHY DO YOU LIVE LIKE A KING?
Why not? I am an old Jew! You know Jews -- if you ask them a question, they answer
it with another question.
There is a famous story about a king. He had many Jews in his court because they
were rich people, but he was very annoyed by their habit. Whenever he asked
anything, they would answer it with another question. He became so tired, so irritated
that he asked his Grand Vizier, 'What to do about these people? They cannot be
thrown out of the court, but they annoy me very much. Whenever I ask something
they always answer with another question.'
The Vizier said, 'It will be good if we ask the rabbi. Call the rabbi. He is a wise old
man, he will help us and he will be able to explain to us what is the cause of this
Jewish habit.'
So the rabbi was called and the king asked the rabbi, 'Why do you Jews always
answer a question with another question?' And the rabbi said, 'Why not?'
You ask me, 'Why do you live like a king?'
There are four possibilities after you become enlightened. The first possibility Nanak
and Marcus Aurelius followed. They were born as kings; after they became
enlightened they remained kings.
The second possibility Jesus and Kabir followed. They were born as beggars, after
they became enlightened they remained beggars.
The third possibility was followed by Mahavir and the Buddha: they were born as
kings; when they became enlightened they remained beggars.
Then, I thought, for a change... I was born as a beggar; I decided to live as a king.
That is the fourth possibility and there is no other, so I am finishing the last.
Somebody had to do it, otherwise history would remain incomplete.
One Zen Master was dying. Just before he breathed his last he opened his eyes and
asked his disciples, 'Please help me to find an alternative way to die.'
They asked, 'What kind of question is this?'
He said, 'Should I die lying down or sitting or standing? Have you ever heard of
anybody dying sitting?'
They said, 'Yes, we have heard. Many people, particularly Buddhist monks -- they sit
in a SIDDHASAN in the full lotus posture and die. We have heard of many dying in a
sitting posture.' 'Have you ever heard,' the Master asked, 'of anybody dying standing?'
They said, 'It is very rare, but we have heard one story that once a Master died
standing.'
Then he said, 'Then no other alternative is left. I will die standing on my head.'
And he died -- standing on his head. Somebody has to fulfil it. All alternatives have to
be tried.
The fifth question:
Question 4
MY QUESTION CONCERNS THE QUANTUM LEAP. HOW TO JUMP, WHERE
TO JUMP, AND WHO OR WHAT IS DOING THE JUMPING?
Jamia, the meaning of the quantum leap is that you find nobody there inside you who
can jump. You find no place where you can jump and you find no means to jump.
That is the meaning of a quantum leap. The quantum leap is not a leap, it is a
disappearance. The quantum leap is utter discontinuity with the past. If it is
continuous it is just a leap, not quantum. That is the meaning of the word 'quantum'.
You have been somebody up to now; if you do something, then you will remain
continuous with the past because the doer will be the past. If you ask how to take the
quantum leap, who will use the methodology? The old, the past, the mind, the
accumulated mind will use the methodology. But how will you become new? It is the
old trying to become new. You may have new clothes, a new face, new varnish, but
you will remain the same; you continue.
A quantum leap is a moment of understanding that the past is no more there, that it is
just a memory, just a figment of imagination now; it has no reality. If the past is no
more there, who are you? -- because you consist only of your past.
Krishnamurti says, 'The process of thought creates the thinker.' And he is right -- it is
not vice versa. Ordinarily you think, 'I am a thinker, hence the process of thought.' It
is not so. There is no thinker in you but only a process of thought. And when you
think about the whole process of thought and you take it together, the thinker is born.
The thinker is not there. Let thoughts disappear, and as thoughts disappear, the thinker
will disappear. If there is no thought, there is no thinker inside. So 'thinker' is nothing
but another name for the whole thought continuum.
If you can understand this -- that the past is just nothing but thoughts -- suddenly a
great emptiness will arise in you, a great abyss. You are not, nobody is there inside.
This is what Buddha calls ANATTA, no-self, no ego. In that moment when you
cannot find yourself, the quantum leap has happened.
The Emperor Wu of China asked Bodhidharma, 'My mind remainS very tense, in
anxiety. I am always feeling restless, uneasy. I never find any peace of mind. Help me,
sir.'
Bodhidharma looked into his eyes. And that was not an ordinary look -- Bodhidharma
was a very ferocious Master. The king was a very brave man, had fought in many
battles and won, but he started trembling when Bodhidharma looked into his eyes.
And he said, 'Okay, come tomorrow, early in the morning at four o'clock, and bring
your mind to me and I will put it at ease forever.'
When the king was going down the steps, Bodhidharma shouted again, 'Listen, don't
forget to bring your mind! Come at four o'clock and bring your mind. And I am going
to put it at ease forever!'
The king was a little puzzled. 'What does he mean, "Bring the mind, don't forget"?
Can I come without the mind too? I and my mind are the same. This man looks mad!
And the way he looked at me... those ferocious eyes... And he looks murderous too!
And going alone, early in the morning at four o'clock when it is dark, to this
madman... and one never knows what he will do, how he will treat me.'
But he could not sleep. Many times he decided not to go, but there was a great
attraction too, something like a great magnetic pull. The man was ferocious, but there
was great love in his eyes too. Both were there -- his eyes were like swords and also
like lotuses. He could not resist. He said, 'I have to take this risk.' And at four o'clock
he had to go.
Bodhidharma was waiting with his big staff. He told the king, 'Sit in front of me. And
where is your mind? I told you to bring it with you!'
And the king said, 'What nonsense are you talking about? If I am here, so is my mind.
Mind is something inside me. How can I forget it? How can I "bring" it?'
Bodhidharma said, 'So, one thing is certain: that mind is inside. So close your eyes
and go inside and try to find it. And whenever you catch it, just tell me and I will put
it at rest forever. But first it has to be caught, only then can I treat it.' The king closed
his eyes. The whole thing was stupid, but there was nowhere to go now -- it had to be
done. He closed his eyes. And the Master was sitting there with his staff -- and he
might beat or he might hit, so it was no ordinary situation. He could not go to sleep.
He had not slept the whole night -- he had been thinking of whether to come or not to
come... And the presence of the Master and the silence of the forest and the darkness
of the night and the whole weird situation: that this man could even cut his head... He
became very alert. The danger was such that he became very attentive. For the first
time in his life he looked inside himself -- what the book, THE SECRET OF THE
GOLDEN FLOWER, calls 'turning the light inwards'. For the first time he looked
inside, he searched inside. He really searched, sincerely he searched. And the more he
searched, the more aware he became that there is no mind, there is nobody inside. It is
an empty house; we had only believed in it. We have accepted others' belief about the
soul, the self, the ego. We never looked at it, we never checked it. And the more he
found that there is nobody to be found, the more happy, joyous, he became. His face
relaxed; a great grace surrounded him. Hours passed, but for him there was no
question of time at all. He was sitting and sitting, and enjoying this blissfulness that
he was tasting for the first time in his life. Something immensely delightful was
descending on him.
Then the sun started rising, and with the first rays of the sun, Bodhidharma said to
him, 'Sir, it is time enough! Now open your eyes. Have you found yourself inside or
not?'
And the king opened his eyes, looked at the Master, saw the beauty, saw that the
ferociousness was out of compassion, saw the love, bowed down, touched the feet of
the Master and said, 'You have put it at rest forever. It is not there. Now I know that I
was creating an unnecessary fuss about something which doesn't exist at all.'
This is the quantum leap. Searching inside you find you are not. Then there is no
question of 'how' and no question of 'where'. It has already happened.
Jamia, I would like to tell you: just close your eyes for a few hours every day, become
as alert as Emperor Wu became, remember me just in front of you with a sword in my
hand, ready to cut you at any moment if you fall asleep, and go in. And, one day the
quantum leap. You will know only when it has happened. You don't do it, it is nothing
of your doing, it is a happening. You can't do it because you are the hindrance -- how
can you do it? There is nowhere to jump, nobody to jump, no method to jump. When
all these three things have been realized, it has happened.
Then one lives as an emptiness, utterly empty and yet utterly full.
The sixth question:
Question 5
I DESIRE TO BECOME A SANNYASIN, BUT AT THE VERY IDEA A GREAT
FEAR GRIPS MY HEART. IT IS SO NEW. AND, MOREOVER, I HAD NOT
COME HERE TO BECOME A DISCIPLE, I HAD JUST COME TO SEE A FRIEND
WHO IS A SANNYASIN.
But you are caught, you are trapped! Now it will be very difficult to escape. It is
always difficult to choose the new, but only those live who choose the new. To choose
the old is to choose death, not life. To choose the familiar is to remain in the prison of
the familiar, to choose the known is to avoid really the unknown that is knocking on
the door. To choose the known is to reject God, because God is always unknown -not only unknown, but unknowable.
God is always fresh, as fresh as the dewdrops. God is always utterly new, unfamiliar,
unmapped, unscheduled, uncalculated. God comes only as the unknown. And if you
become afraid, if you shrink back, then you have to live in your so-called dark hole.
What is your past that you cling to? What is there to cling to, except that it is familiar?
It is all misery, it is all tragedy. But people even cling to miseries if they are familiar,
if they look friendly. Even if health is knocking on your door, you don't listen to the
knock, you cling to your tuberculosis, to your cancer, because it is familiar; you have
lived with it so long. It looks almost like a betrayal to leave it and become healthy.
That is why people are clinging to miseries. Even when opportunities arise when
miseries can be dropped and the celebration can start, they continue to cling to the
misery. They persist in it, they insist on it. Even if it drops they catch hold of it again
and again. If one misery disappears, they create a similar misery immediately. They
don't even give a little interval for joy to enter in their being.
But remember, only those live who choose the new. Life means readiness to go into
the uncalculated, unscheduled. Life means to be ready always to listen to the
challenge that comes from the unknown source. It is dangerous, but to live is
dangerous. The most secure and safe place in the world is the grave -- there, nothing
ever happens.
In a small village where Mulla Nasrudin lives, the Municipal Committee was thinking
of creating a wall around the graveyard. Mulla Nasrudin was also a member of the
Committee. He stood up, and he said, 'There is no need.'
The whole Committee looked puzzled, because everybody was in favour of making a
wall around the graveyard. People don't want to see graves and people don't want to
see death. People don't want to become aware that death is. That's why graveyards are
made outside the town, far away. When you have to go there, only then do you go
there; otherwise it is better to avoid.
The village had grown bigger and the graveyard that used to be outside the town was
no longer outside the town -- the town had grown and spread. So the whole
Committee was agreeing. But Mulla said, 'There is no need.'
And the president asked, 'Why do you say that there is no need?'
He said, 'For two reasons. One: those who are outside -- they don't want to go in so
they don't need any wall to prevent them. And, two: those who are inside -- they
cannot come out. So what is the point of making a wall? The wall is needed only to
prevent either those who are in from coming out or to prevent those who are out from
coming in. Those who are out, they don't want to go in; they go only in utter
helplessness. When they have to go, when they have to be carried by four persons,
then they go. And once they are in they cannot come out -- nobody has ever heard of
anybody coming out. It is pointless!'
The grave is the most safe and secure place in the world, because nothing new will
ever happen there.
Remember it: don't become a grave.
Sannyas is new for you, and you did not come here to become a sannyasin... Do you
think all those who are sannyasins here came to become sannyasins? They have been
caught unawares! Before they could escape I caught hold of their hearts. You are also
caught now. If you escape, you escape at your own risk. You will repent forever and
you will feel sorry forever, because there was an opportunity of being transformed, an
opportunity to learn the ways of let-go, an opportunity of falling into your own being,
resting into your own being, an opportunity to bloom. But you became afraid because
it
Meditate on these lines of Robert Frost.
Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both,
And be one traveller, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;
Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
And because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that, the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,
And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.
I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I -I took the one less travelled by,
And that has made all the difference.
Always choose the new, the less travelled by. Always choose the unknown, the less
travelled by.
'And that has made all the difference.'
Life grows only by choosing challenges. Life grows only by going into the storms.
Life grows only by risking, gambling.
Sannyas needs courage. The old sannyas was not so dangerous. People think my
sannyas is easier than the old, ancient idea of sannyas. They are utterly wrong. The
old sannyas was very simple because it expected -- not only expected but demanded -that you renounce the world. It was simple. You went into a monastery; you lived
there, undisturbed, undistracted by the world. Meditation became your whole life with
no distractions. It was a monotonous life.
The word 'monastery' and 'monotony' come from the same root. So does the word
'monk'. Life was settled, monotonous, repetitive, the same, and the world was left far
behind. It was easy.
My sannyas is far more complex. You have to live in the market-place and yet live as
if you were living in a monastery. You have to accept all the distractions of life and
yet remain undistracted. You have to be in the world and not be of it.
I have thrown a great challenge to you. The old concept of sannyas was not
challenging enough. It was very appealing to the cowards, to the escapists -- those
who were weary of life, those who were tired of life, those who were incapable of life,
those who were feeling somehow incompetent, inferior. It became very attractive to
the inferior, the untalented, the unintelligent.
If you go to the Himalayas or into a monastery and look at the monks, you will be
surprised: one thing you are bound to find is that their faces show no signs of
intelligence, their eyes don't shine with any light from the beyond. They look dull,
insipid, stupid, unintelligent, incompetent. They have escaped from life.
It is life that gives you sharpness, otherwise your sword will never be sharp. It is the
struggle in life that provokes all the springs of your talents to come to the surface. You
have to be intelligent to survive. In the monastery you are protected by the monastery,
by the sect, by the church. You need not make any effort to survive. Food is given,
clothes are given, and you just have to do some prayer, some chanting, and you have
to repeat, parrot-like, the words of others. Naturally, if one becomes unintelligent
there is no wonder in it. It will be a wonder if somebody becomes intelligent there,
because all the opportunities for intelligence have been prevented -- because they are
the same opportunities which are opportunities for distraction too.
Distraction is an opportunity. You can be distracted -- that is for you to decide -- or
you can remain undistracted, then it will give you centring, crystallization.
My sannyas is the most complicated phenomenon that has ever happened on the earth
because I don't say to you leave the world, I say live in it, indulge in it, love it, enjoy
it, go as deeply as possible so your intelligence is sharpened, your life provoked, your
dormant sources of energies become dynamic, flowing. And yet, keep yourself
centred in your being -- a watcher on the hills. Remain an actor and let the life be just
a drama where you are fulfilling a certain role. But don't get identified with the role.
Remember continuously that this is a role -- that you are a carpenter or a doctor or an
engineer or a teacher, husband, wife, mother, father, son -- that these are all roles, and
the earth is a great stage and a great drama is on. God is the author of it and the
director of it, and you are just actors, participating. When the curtain falls your roles
will disappear. You will again be just a pure being. You will not be the role that you
had played.
The world has to be transformed into an opportunity to remember yourself, for
self-remembering. Hence sannyas is arduous. And I know that everybody hesitates
before they take the jump, but if the desire has arisen, if the longing is there, don't kill
it, because that will be suicidal. Experiment with it, explore this new dimension. You
have lived one way -- what is the point of going on repeating it again and again? Live
this new style too. Who knows? -- you may come across God on this way. Who
knows? -- fulfilment may await you on this path.
The last question:
Question 6
WHY DO I LOVE, THEN HATE AND THEN SHOW INDIFFERENCE TO THE
SAME PERSON?
Tushara, you don't know yet what love is. You don't know yet that many other things
masquerade as love, play tricks on you -- many things. Yes, sometimes even hate can
have the mask of love; sometimes sheer sexuality pretends to be love. And this must
be so.
You say, 'Why do I love, then hate and then show indifference to the same person?'
You have not loved yet; it is just a sexual appetite in you. And I call it appetite
knowingly. When you are hungry you are interested in food. The aroma coming from
Vrindavan attracts you; everything else becomes unimportant. You find yourself
moving towards Vrindavan. Once you have eaten, all interest in food disappears; and
if you have eaten too much, you even become repelled by food. If you have eaten too
much, more than was needed, you feel nauseous -- a sickness arising in you. And
when you are satiated with food, you can pass by Vrindavan; you don't smell the
aromas. You can go on thinking a thousand and one thoughts and you can remain
indifferent to food.
Your love is nothing but sexual appetite. That's why first you feel attracted, in 'great
love'. That attraction you call love. Just as people say they love ice cream, that's the
way you love people. But how long can you love ice cream? You can eat, but how
much?
Once I stayed with a family in Bombay. The people are beautiful people, but they
have a strange idea of how to serve a guest. Because I was staying there, they invited
many people; they gave a feast. And then the four brothers started forcing each guest
to eat more and more. They actually started physically forcing food into people's
mouths, and people were saying, 'No!' looking very aghast and puzzled, 'What is
happening?' And there were four persons on each guest!
I asked, 'What is the matter? What are you doing? If they don't want to eat, leave them
to themselves!'
They said, 'But this is our tradition. In our family, unless the guest starts fighting, we
have to... otherwise we have not been real hosts.'
And this was their idea of being a real host! Unless the guest starts fighting... And that
actually happened. When the guest... how long can you suffer? There is a limit! The
body is not infinite and the stomach has a limit. And the guests started shouting. And
they were very happy because they had been good hosts.
First, YOU THINK YOU are in love, Tushara. But that is not love -- just a physical
appetite, a bodily phenomenon, a chemical phenomenon -- nothing to do with love.
Love is a very different thing. It has not necessarily anything to do with sex. Sex may
be a part of it, may not be a part of it. You can be in love with a person without any
sexual relationship. That's what we call friendship. It has disappeared from the world.
Now friendship has almost disappeared from the world because we know only one
kind of love, which is sexual. A non-sexual love has become non-existent. In fact, that
IS love. Friendship is a deeper love than sexual relationship because friendship gives
and asks nothing in return.
Sexual relationship is mutual exploitation: you are exploiting the other's body and he
or she is exploiting your body. Both are using each other. But just to say it is pure sex
looks ugly so we call it love. It will be very good if you call it simple sex; it will be
true, sincere and there will be no problem arising, because then you will know it is
appetite. You are fulfilled one moment and then, if the other goes on demanding and
you go on playing the game, there will be hate, because you will be repulsed. And
sooner or later you will become indifferent, because you have explored the other's
body and he has explored your body. Now there is no more to it; the territories are
known. Now there is no more intrigue, no more mystery to go into. You are finished.
Indifference arises.
Tushara, what you call love is just sex. Call it sex, don't call it love. And it will be
good to call it sex because then you know it is sex. There is no need to pretend. If you
don't pretend, it will not turn into hate. If you pretend that it is love and it is not,
sooner or later you will see it is turning into hate. If you don't pretend, if you call it
simply sex, you will be grateful to the other, you will not hate the other. And it will
never become indifference; you will always feel thankful.
But calling it by a big name, 'love', creates the whole trouble. Then the problem arises
-- why does it turn into hate? Love never turns into hate. Love goes on becoming
more and more love. Love ultimately becomes prayer and God.
But this is not love. The first thing -- my suggestion -- is: call it simple, pure sex. And
there is nothing wrong in pure, simple sex; it is natural. There is no need to hide it
behind the beautiful word 'love'. There is no need to create a cloud of romance around
it. Be simple, be true, sincere. If this is done, half the work is done. Then one day you
will be able to see the difference. One day you will fall in love and you will see it is
not just physiological, chemical attraction, but something higher, something superior
-- two vibes falling in tune, two spirits feeling close, two beings feeling harmonious.
My own words are: if two bodies are feeling attracted to each other, it is sex; if two
minds are feeling attracted to each other, it is love; if two souls are feeling attracted to
each other, it is prayer. And prayer is the highest form. Sex is the lowest form. Don't
think of the lower as the higher; otherwise you remain misguided.
A man and woman had been going together for some time and finally she agreed to go
to bed with him. While going to his apartment, they passed some swank shops. The
woman admired some expensive Italian shoes.
'Don't worry, baby, I'll get them for you,' he said. Then she saw a real Parisian dress.
'Don't worry, baby, I'll get that for you, too.' Finally, a mink coat caught her eye.
'Don't worry, baby, I'll get that coat for you.'
They finally got to the apartment, made love, and in leaving, again passed the shops.
'There is the coat you are going to buy me,' she said. 'Come on away from there,' he
snapped.
'Oh, and there is the dress.'
'Come on away from there,' was again the reply. Finally she saw the shoes and pointed
them out. Again he responded, 'Come on away from there.' She began to cry and
sobbed, 'I don't understand. Before we made love, you promised me all those things.
Now, just two hours later, you are breaking your promises.'
'Baby, it's like this. When I am hard, I am soft, but when I am soft, I am hard.'
The Secret of Secrets, Vol 1
Chapter #9
Chapter title: Riding on a Miracle
19 August 1978 am in Buddha Hall
Archive code:
7808190
ShortTitle:
SOS109
Audio: Yes
Video:
No
Length: 101 mins
MASTER LU-TSU SAID: 'RELEASE IS IN THE EYE... THE SEED-BLOSSOMS
OF THE HUMAN BODY MUST BE CONCENTRATED UPWARD IN THE
EMPTY SPACE.' IMMORTALITY IS CONTAINED IN THIS AND ALSO THE
OVERCOMING OF THE WORLD.
THE LIGHT IS NOT IN THE BODY ALONE, NOR IS IT ONLY OUTSIDE THE
BODY. MOUNTAINS AND RIVERS AND THE GREAT EARTH ARE LIT BY
SUN AND MOON; ALL THAT IS THIS LIGHT. THEREFORE IT IS NOT ONLY
WITHIN THE BODY. UNDERSTANDING AND CLARITY, PERCEPTION AND
ENLIGHTENMENT, AND ALL MOVEMENTS (OF THE SPIRIT) ARE LIKEWISE
THIS LIGHT; THEREFORE IT IS NOT JUST SOMETHING OUTSIDE THE
BODY. THE LIGHT-FLOWER OF HEAVEN AND EARTH FILLS ALL THE
THOUSAND SPACES. BUT ALSO THE LIGHT-FLOWER OF THE INDIVIDUAL
BODY PASSES THROUGH HEAVEN AND COVERS THE EARTH. THEREFORE,
AS SOON AS THE LIGHT IS CIRCULATING, HEAVEN AND EARTH,
MOUNTAINS AND RIVERS, ARE ALL CIRCULATING WITH IT AT THE SAME
TIME.
TO CONCENTRATE THE SEED-FLOWER OF THE HUMAN BODY ABOVE IN
THE EYES, THAT IS THE GREAT KEY OF THE HUMAN BODY. CHILDREN,
TAKE HEED! IF FOR A DAY YOU DO NOT PRACTISE MEDITATION, THIS
LIGHT STREAMS OUT, WHO KNOWS WHITHER? IF YOU ONLY MEDITATE
FOR A QUARTER OF AN HOUR, BY IT YOU CAN DO AWAY WITH THE TEN
THOUSAND AEONS AND A THOUSAND BIRTHS. ALL METHODS END IN
QUIETNESS. THIS MARVELLOUS MAGIC CANNOT BE FATHOMED.
BUT WHEN THE PRACTICE IS STARTED, ONE MUST PRESS ON FROM THE
OBVIOUS TO THE PROFOUND, FROM THE COARSE TO THE FINE.
EVERYTHING DEPENDS ON THERE BEING NO INTERRUPTION. THE
BEGINNING AND THE END OF THE PRACTICE MUST BE ONE. IN BETWEEN
THERE ARE COOLER AND WARMER MOMENTS, THAT GOES WITHOUT
SAYING. BUT THE GOAL MUST BE TO REACH THE VASTNESS OF HEAVEN
AND THE DEPTHS OF THE SEA, SO THAT ALL METHODS SEEM QUITE
EASY AND TAKEN FOR GRANTED. ONLY THEN HAVE WE MASTERED IT.
AN OLD FABLE has it that when God was creating the world he was approached by
four questioning angels. 'How are you doing it?' the first one asked. The second
queried, 'Why?' The third one said, 'May I have it when you finish?' The fourth one
said, 'Can I help?'
The first one was the question of the scientist, the second, the philosopher's, the third,
the politician's, and the fourth was the question of the religious one.
The scientific inquiry into existence is that of detached observation. The scientist has
to be objective. To be objective he has to remain uninvolved; he cannot participate,
because the moment he becomes a participant he becomes involved. Hence the
scientist can only know the outer circumference of life and existence. The innermost
core will remain unavailable to science; its very methodology prohibits it.
The philosopher only speculates, he never experiments. He goes on asking AD
infinitum, 'Why?' And the question is such that whatsoever the answer, it can be asked
again -- 'Why?' There is no possibility of any conclusion through philosophy.
Philosophy remains in a state of non-conclusion. It is a futile activity; it leads
nowhere.
The politician simply wants to possess the world, to own it. He is the most dangerous
of all because he is the most violent. His interest in life is not in life itself but in his
own power. He is power-hungry, power-mad; he is a maniac, he is destructive. The
moment you possess something alive, you kill it, because the moment something
becomes a property it is no more alive. Possess a tree, and it is no more alive. Possess
a woman or a man, and you have killed them. Possess anything, and death is the
outcome, because only death can be possessed.
Life is freedom. It remains basically free. You cannot possess it, you cannot put it into
the bank, you cannot draw a line around it. You cannot say, 'This is mine'; to say so is
disrespectful, to say so is egoistic, to say so is mad.
Life possesses us. How can we possess it? We have to be possessed by life more and
more. The whole gestalt has to change: from being possessive, one has to become
capable of being possessed by the whole.
The politician never comes to know the truth of life.
The religious person participates. He dances with life. He sings with existence. He
helps life. He is surrendered to existence, and he is not detached and aloof. He does
not really ask any question, he is not after knowledge; his whole effort is how to be in
harmony with existence, how to be totally one with it. Hence the Eastern word for the
ultimate experience: SAMADHI.
It comes from two words. SAM -- SAM means together with. The same root SAM
has moved into English, too; it is in 'sympathy', it is in 'symphony'. A little bit changed,
it is in 'synthesis', 'synchronicity'. SAM means together with. ADHI means the lord,
God. SAMADHI means union with God, to be one with God. And that is exactly the
meaning of the English word 'religion'. It means to become one with existence; not to
be divided, not to remain separate but to become one. And only in this oneness does
one come to know, see, experience, and be.
Religion is also a great experiment -- the greatest, in fact -- but with a difference.
Science experiments with the object, religion experiments with the subject itself. Its
whole concern is: Who am I?
One should begin from the beginning. Unless I know myself, I am not going to know
anything else. If deep down I remain ignorant, then my whole knowledge is just
garbage. It is based on ignorance, it is rooted in ignorance. First the light has to
happen inside me, and then it can spread. Then it can go to the very boundaries of
existence -- if there are any boundaries. But first this has to happen within me. The
first flame has to come from my subjectivity. When my centre is full of light, then
only will whatsoever is known really be known. Unless you know yourself, unless the
knower is there, how can you know anything else? If you yourself are in deep
darkness, all the lights that you have created outside are deceptions, illusions.
The religious quest is the greatest quest in existence. A few things have to be
understood about this quest.
The first thing: religion cannot creep; it has to dance or die. And that's what is not
happening in the world -- religion is not dancing, hence it has died. Religion is
creeping and crawling; it has forgotten how to fly. Religion has become dogma.
Dogma is death; it is a corpse. To be flowing and alive and flying, religion has to exist
as an experience -- not as a theory, not as theology, but as meditation; not as a
philosophy about God but as a personal experience of God. And, know perfectly well:
to know about God is not to know God. You can go on knowing about and about, but
you will never know God. To know about is to go round and round without
penetrating the very centre of it.
Religion cannot creep, and religion is creeping. Christianity, Hinduism, Islam -- they
are all creeping. They have all become apologetic. They are all afraid of the scientific
growth in the world. They have been fighting against science. They tried all that they
could do to prevent scientific growth, but they failed. Now they try to get all of their
support from science -- whatsoever they can manage -- but they know perfectly well
that they have become secondary. They can exist only if science supports them. They
can exist only if scientific argument becomes a prop. This is creeping. Religion is no
more on its own ground, on its own feet; it needs support from science. It is living a
borrowed existence, a borrowed life. Its time is gone.
Why has it happened? Once a religion becomes dogma and is no more experience, it
dies automatically. And a dead body cannot stand on its own, it needs support. All the
churches and the temples are supported, they are not standing on their own.
When there is a Buddha he stands on his own. When there is a Christ he stands on his
own. Then religion dances, sings a song. Then it is alive, it blooms, there are a
thousand and one flowers, and great fragrance is released.
My effort here is to make religion dance again. There is no need for any support,
because religion in itself is the greatest authentic experience. Others should look
towards science for support, not religion! If religion starts dancing, starts becoming
alive, science will need its support, because science itself is losing ground. It is
becoming uglier and uglier every day. It is becoming more and more life-negative
every day. It is becoming more and more political every day. All that science
discovers is possessed by the politician. And all that science discovers serves death; it
is no more serving life. Ninety percent of scientific effort goes on war. Science is
losing face. Unless religion starts dancing, even science will no longer have any
future. Science will need some release of energy from religion to support it. And if
religion can be alive again and science becomes a part, a shadow of religion, then
only can it be free of the politician and his madness. Otherwise it seems impossible.
Man is coming closer and closer to the ultimate destruction of life on the earth. Only a
release of religious energy can save him, can save humanity.
What we are doing here may look like a very small experiment, but its potential is
infinite. The future of humanity depends on only one thing: that religion can again
lead man, that religion can again become the central influence on man, that religion
can again become humanity's dream.
And remember, it is a very difficult dream -- almost impossible. To dream to be with
God, to dream to be in God, is bound to be something like an impossible dream. Man
has lost courage. His dreams are tiny now, his dreams are very mundane; he no longer
dreams of the transcendental. And remember, if you stop dreaming about the
transcendental, you will live a meaningless life. Meaning arises only in contact with
the transcendental. Meaning arises only when you are part of a greater whole, when
you are part of something higher than you, something bigger than you. When man
tries to surpass himself then there is religion. And that's what I call the dance of
religion -- man trying to transcend himself. No other animal can do it. No other
animal is capable of it. Only man has the potential and the possibility to surpass
himself. And a few men have surpassed themselves; a few men have reached to the
other shore.
And when I am talking to you, I am talking from the other shore. Hence, I am not
saying it from borrowed knowledge, I am saying it from my own experience. I know
the impossible can become possible. It has become possible in me, it can become
possible in you. Once your inner being becomes full of light, once you know no
darkness within yourself, then you are religious.
Dream the impossible dream. It may look almost absurd in the beginning -- it does
look -- but if it is strong enough, it transforms your reality.
I have heard...
Three trees once grew on a hillside, and as they swayed in the breeze they would
dream what they would like to be.
'I should like to be cut down one day,' said the first tree, 'and turned into a baby's
cradle.'
'I should like to be cut down one day,' said the second, 'and become a great ship
sailing the seas, carrying treasure and precious stones.'
And the third said, 'I should like to stand on a hill-top and point people to heaven.'
One day the woodcutters came along and cut down the first tree. 'Let's make it into a
cattle stall,' they said.
'But I don't wish to be a cattle stall,' cried the tree. 'I want to be a baby's cradle.' But
they turned it into a cattle stall, and when the child Jesus was born, they laid him
gently in the cattle stall for there was nowhere else to put him. And the tree said, 'Why,
this is far far more wonderful than ever I dreamed.'
The woodcutters said of the second tree, 'Let's make this tree into a fishing boat.'
But the tree said, 'No! I don't wish to be a fishing boat; I want to be a great ship
carrying treasure and precious stones.' But they turned the tree into a fishing boat and
put it on an island lake. And a fisherman called Simon Peter bought the boat, and
Jesus sailed in the boat and taught the people from it. And the tree said, 'Why, this is
far far more wonderful than ever I dreamed.'
And of the third tree they said, 'Let's make it into a cross.' But the tree said, 'I don't
want to be a cross -- a thing of shame on which men die. I want to stand on a hill-top
and point people to heaven.' But they turned the tree into a cross and Jesus was nailed
to that cross. And all down the years, men have looked to that cross, and it has pointed
them to God.
Even if trees can dream something, they become it. So what to say about man?
Man has the greatest potential on the earth, in existence. If you are lacking something,
it means you are lacking a great dream of surpassing yourself. You have become
satisfied with the mundane. You have started creeping on the earth, crawling on the
earth. You don't look upwards. There is a great beyond calling you forth! There is a
great beyond challenging you. And only that man is truly a man who accepts the
challenge of the beyond. All others are only men in name, in form, but not really men.
Be a man! Accept the challenge of the unknown, of the beyond. Let it become a great
dream in your being. That which you appear to be is only a seed. The seed has to fall
into the soil, and has to die, and has to become a tree, and has to bloom.
If you cut the seed, you will not find flowers there. That's where science is missing the
whole point -- it goes on cutting the seed. It says, 'You say this seed will bring great
flowering? We will cut and dissect the seed, and see.' And they cut and dissect the
seed, and they have the methodology to dissect the seed, but no flower is found. So
they say there is no flower. That's how they have come to the conclusion that there is
no God in existence, that there is no soul, that there is no beyond, that life is just an
accident and there is no destiny to life.
There is a famous saying of the Zen Master, Ikkyu.
'If you break open the cherry tree, where are the blossoms?
But in springtime how they bloom!'
Wait for the springtime. If you want to see, then wait for the springtime. And then you
will find a Buddha, not a man; and you will find a Jesus, not a man; and you will find
a Krishna, not a man. Then you will find the flower, and the seed is no more found
there; the seed has disappeared, its function fulfilled. It was protecting something of
immense value, it was carrying a blueprint; now it is no more needed. The soil has
been found, the spring has arrived, and the seed was courageous enough to die.
Man's ego is nothing but a seed. It is very protective. People ask me, 'If ego is such a
barrier towards God, then why in the first place does ego exist? If mind is such a
barrier to God, then why does mind exist at all?' It exists to protect you, just as the
hard shell of the seed exists to protect the potential. The potential is very soft; it will
be destroyed if the hard shell is not around it. The hard shell is not the enemy. The
hard shell will be the enemy only if the spring has come, and the soil has been found,
and the seed rejects death. If the hard shell says, 'Now, I will go on protecting you,
even against the spring. I will protect you against this soil,' then there is going to be
trouble.
That's where the problem arises. The ego in itself is not a problem. The child needs it,
otherwise the child will be very unprotected. He will not know how to survive in this
world of struggle. He will not know how to protect himself against so many hazards.
He is so soft, tender, he will die before he becomes a Buddha. The ego helps him. The
ego is a kind of armour, and so is the mind -- it protects him.
It is not your enemy. It is the enemy only when the moment has come and you are
ready to move into meditation -- you have found a Master, you have found a method
and you are ready -- but the mind says, 'No, I cannot die. Just think of all the blessings
that I have showered upon you. Just think of all the benefits that I have given you.
Just think of all that I have done for you! Feel grateful, and don't try to destroy me.'
Then the problem arises: then the protector becomes destructive. Then you have to
fight against your own mind, you have to fight against your own ego, you have to
fight against your own armour, because the armour is no more needed. You have to
release your inner potential -- spring has come.
So when spring has come, only then is it a problem; otherwise it is not a problem, it is
a help. The helpful can become a hindrance. When its time is gone, it has to go.
Dream of the impossible. Dream of surpassing yourself. Dream of NIRVANA, dream
of MOKSHA, dream of the kingdom of God; only then will you start working and
moving towards it, and only then with that dream, will your feet have the quality of
dance.
Without the dream you will become dull. That's why people are dragging. How can
they dance? For what? Just to go every day to the office and work, and come back
home and quarrel with the wife and listen to all the complaints of the children? And
next day the same rut starts again -- year in, year out. What is there to dance about? In
fact, it is a miracle how man goes on living, why he does not commit suicide. What
does he live for?
There is nothing that is awaiting him, there is nothing that he can look up to. There is
no star in the night; it is all darkness. It is a miracle how man goes on living, how he
manages. The people who commit suicide seem to be more logical. The people who
go on living seem to be very illogical. Miserable, bored, dragging -- but they go on
living. But it shows something. It shows one thing: that your innermost being knows
that the possibility is there. Any day you may become alert about the potential, about
the possible. Any day, the dream will possess you. And then there will be meaning and
there will be dance.
'Religion is art,' said William Blake. 'Religion is art, not money.'
This is a very very pregnant statement. And only a man like William Blake could have
made it. He is a mystic poet.
What is art? 'Art is a way,' he says, 'of doing something': painting, poetry, dancing,
sculpture, music, pottery, weaving. 'Art is a way of doing something.' He does not say
anything about creating oneself. But that is exactly what religion is. It is not painting,
it is not poetry, it is not sculpture, it is not music, but something on the same lines,
something beyond -- creating oneself.
Religion is a way of doing something also -- living, loving, seeing, being. All art is
'making'. It is helping God to create. That's why I call the man who said to God, 'Can I
help?' the religious man.
If you want to know the creator you will have to become a creator in some measure
on your own. Poetry may not be religion proper but it points in the right direction.
When a poet is really in a creative state, he knows something of religion -- a faraway
distant music, because when he is in a creative state, he is no more himself. He
participates -- although in a very small measure, but he participates in God.
Just a drop of divinity enters into him. That's why great poets have always said, 'When
we write poetry, we are not the creators of it. We become possessed. Some unknown
energy enters, sings, dances in us. We don't know what it is.' When a painter is lost
into his painting, he is utterly lost into his painting, his ego disappears. Maybe only
for moments, but in those egoless moments God paints through him.
If you participate in God, God participates in you. Art is an unconscious form of
religion. Religion is conscious art. Art is as if you are religious in a dream, but it is
pointing in the right direction. The artist is the nearest to the religious. But it is not
understood that way. You don't think of a poet as religious or a painter as religious, on
the contrary, if somebody fasts, tortures his body, makes his being ugly, you start
thinking that HE is religious. He is simply being violent with himself. He is just
suicidal, he is neurotic, and you think he is religious.
Neurotics become MAHATMAS; they are respected and worshipped as saints. They
are not religious at all. The difference between a so-called saint and a murderer is not
much. The murderer murders somebody else, and your so-called saint murders
himself. But both do the same thing: both are violent, both are destructive. And
whenever you are destructive you are farthest from God, because God is creativity. To
me, aesthetics is the closest neighbour of religiousness, not ethics.
Lenin is reported to have said, 'Ethics will be the aesthetics of the future.' I say: No,
just the contrary; aesthetics will be the ethics of the future. Beauty is going to be the
truth of the future, because beauty can be created. And a beautiful person, who loves
beauty, who lives beauty, who creates beauty, is moral -- and with no effort. His
morality is not a cultivated morality, it is just his aesthetic sense that makes him moral.
He cannot kill because he cannot think of killing as being beautiful. He cannot cheat,
he cannot be dishonest because all these things make him feel ugly. His criterion is
beauty. And I agree with William Blake that religion is art.
All art is making. All making neCessitates a kind of faith. You see what is not there,
and work in such a way that what was invisible, intangible, inaudible, is given shape
in time and space. What is produced will be apparent to the senses -- a painting, a
poem, or a garden. Art is not to be confused, however, with the object it produces.
It is a beautiful distinction to be remembered. It will help you immensely to
understand religion.
Art is not a painting or a piece of sculpture. What art dealers buy and sell are works of
art, not art itself. Works of art are a form of property. Just as art is not the same thing
as works of art, so religion is not to be confused with the objects and effects its
produces -- such as dogmas, doctrines, Bibles, Korans, Gitas, churches, temples,
cathedrals. These are WORKS of art. You can call them works of the art of religion,
but religion should not be confused with them.
A church is a church. It may be beautiful, but it is not religion in itself. It is a
by-product, a spin-off. A Koran is a beautiful poem, but as a work of art, a spin-off.
Something happened in Mohammed's heart -- that was religion, but that remains
invisible. Because something stirred in his soul, he started singing, he went into a mad
expression. That's exactly what he thought when for the first time alone on the
mountains he started feeling the presence of God. He became so frightened, so afraid,
he thought he had either gone mad or become a
He rushed home. He was in a feverish state, trembling. His wife thought he had
suddenly got a high fever. She asked, 'What has happened to you?' And he said,
'Either I have gone mad or I have become a poet. Something tremendously great is
happening, and I don't know what it is or from where it is coming. And I am so
unworthy of it... I cannot believe my own eyes, and I cannot believe my own heart -what I am feeling. It is so immensely beautiful, so great, so vast, I am incapable of
conceiving it.'
That was religion.
A few days fever, and Mohammed cooled down and settled into his new state, his
ecstasy, his SAMADHI. And then the flow started: the beautiful Koran was born. But
the Koran is a by-product, so is the Gita, so is the Dhammapada. Remember always
that no scripture contains religion -- cannot contain it. All scriptures are by-products
of religion -- shadows, footprints, left on the banks of time. But footprints are
footprints.
When Buddha walks on a sea beach, naturally, he will leave footprints, but those
footprints are not Buddha himself, those footprints are beautiful because they belong
to Buddha. Bow down to them! but don't forget they are just by-products. And you
have to be a Buddha, not just the worshipper of a footprint .
Works of art are a form of property, that's why you can sell them, purchase them; but
you cannot sell art and you cannot purchase art. If you ask Pablo Picasso to sell you
his art, it will be impossible. You may be ready to pay any fantastic price for it, but he
cannot sell it. He can sell his paintings, but he cannot sell his art. There is no way of
selling it because it is not a thing. It remains always invisible. Only effects become
visible.
God remains invisible, only in the world does he becomes visible. You are invisible,
only the body is visible.
That's why Blake says religion is not money. He is right. He meanS religion is not
property. Religion is not like that, religion is like love -- you cannot buy it, sell it, or
keep it in a bank. You cannot possess it; on the contrary, it possesses you.
The work of art can be possessed; it is property, it is dead. You can learn the Koran
and the Gita and the Bible, but you cannot learn religion. You have to live it -- there is
no way of learning it. You have to be possessed by God, you have to become available
to God. You have to open up your being. You have to withdraw. You have to become
empty so that God can enter and possess you totally. In that very possession, you have
transcended humanity. You are no more a human being, you are a god, a Christ, a
Buddha.
These sutras are the secrets to help you release this Buddhahood that you are carrying
as a blueprint, that you are carrying in a seed form; to help it bloom; to help it become
a great tree with great foliage and many flowers.
The sutras.
Master Lu-tsu said: 'RELEASE IS IN THE EYE...
This potential that I have been talking to you about, this Buddhahood, this
Christ-consciousness or Krishna-consciousness, or whatever you wish to call it, is in
the third eye. Just between your two physical eyes there is an empty space, and that
empty space is the seed of your being a god. Unless that third eye starts functioning,
your potential will not be released.
Hence,
Master Lu-tsu said: 'RELEASE IS IN THE EYE...'
Release means NIRVANA, MOKSHA, deliverance, freedom. Release means
enlightenment. If your third eye can start functioning... It is dormant, non-functioning;
your energy has not reached up to it. It is a mechanism -- perfect, but without any
energy reaching it. Your energy is flowing downward into your sexuality, into your
greed, into your anger, into your worldly affairs -- your energy is moving downwards
and outwards. You don't have enough energy to bring to the third-eye centre. Unless
you have an abundance of energy, it will not reach the third eye.
You have to become a reservoir of energy. And when you become a reservoir and
energy is not wasted, its level starts going higher and higher every day. One day it
reaches the third eye, and the moment the energy touches the third eye, immediately,
instantly, it starts functioning. And then you know, and then you see for the first time.
Then you have the vision of life -- what it is. And only through the third eye will you
be able to know God, reality, that which is.
Through the two physical eyes you know the world. And because your eyes are two,
the world is divided, it is dual. Your two eyes make the world divided. The world in
itself is not divided, but your way of seeing it divides it.
It is like a ray passing through a prism. The ray is one; the moment it passes through a
prism, it becomes seven; it is broken up into seven colours. That is how the rainbow is
created: sunrays passing through drops of water hanging in the clouds. Those hanging
drops function as prisms, and the sunrays passing through them are immediately split
into seven colours .
Your energy moves through your two eyes and the whole world becomes dual. Then
you see day and night as opposite, life and death as opposite, love and hate as
opposite, matter and consciousness as opposite. Your two eyes make all things dual
and polar. And because of these two eyes you cannot see the oneness of existence.
Unless your two eyes become one eye, you will never know the indivisible, the
universal.
The book, THE SECRET OF THE GOLDEN FLOWER, says: energy going outwards
becomes dual; if you bring it backwards it becomes again one -- it loses duality, it
becomes non-dual. When energy moves back from the two eyes, it starts falling into
the original source.
If you mix the seven colours of the rainbow into one, it becomes white, it becomes
one colour. The method is the same. Energy moving outwards passes through two
eyes and the whole existence becomes dual. Energy moving backwards passes
through two eyes and moves into one eye, the third eye -- which is just exactly in
between the two -- and suddenly all is one. This is SAMADHI. YOU are one with
God.
'RELEASE IS IN THE EYE... THE SEED-BLOSSOMS OF THE HUMAN BODY
MUST BE CONCENTRATED UPWARD IN THE EMPTY SPACE.'
Right now it is an empty space. But once energy starts moving inwards, it becomes
full of light.
IMMORTALITY IS CONTAINED IN THIS AND ALSO THE OVERCOMING OF
THE WORLD.
And the moment you have reached the one point in your being... Jesus says, 'When
your two eyes become one, you have entered the kingdom of God.' You know
immortality, because now you know life and death are not opposite but two wings of
the same bird. Death does not destroy life but helps it to renew itself again. Death is
not the enemy but the friend. It simply helps life to change its garments because they
have become rotten; they have been used and they cannot be used anymore. It simply
helps you to change the house, it does not end you. It only gives you a new beginning,
a fresh lease of energy.
Then darkness and light are not two. Then opposites disappear and they become
complementaries. Then the whole existence becomes a dance between the masculine
energy and the feminine energy. Then it is an orgasmic dance. Then both are one,
meeting, melting into each other. The conflict disappears. And when you see the
whole existence without any conflict, certainly, great joy arises. There is no death.
Death one sees only from the outside. You see somebody else dying, you have never
seen yourself dying. Nobody has ever seen himself dying.
When Socrates was given poison, he was very enchanted. His disciples were crying
and weeping, and he said, 'Don't weep. Soon I will be gone, and then you can weep to
your heart's content Right now, see this great experiment that is happening to me. I am
very intrigued by the idea of death -- whether I am really going to die or not. Don't
miss this opportunity. Just sit around me and watch.'
A Master teaches through his life and also teaches through his death. A Master uses
every opportunity -- even his own death he will use to teach his disciples. Because he
shouted and was very angry and said, 'Stop crying and weeping and come close! Don't
miss this opportunity!' the disciples looked. And Socrates said, 'Wait. The poison is
being given to me. Now I will tell you what is happening to me inside, so you can
become aware of something that you cannot see.' And then he said, 'Up to my knees,
my legs are dead. But as far as I am concerned, I am intact and as whole as I was
before.' Then he said, 'My whole legs have gone dead -- below the waist I cannot feel
anything.' He asked a disciple to touch his feet, to pinch them, but he could not feel
anything. He said, 'I cannot feel them, so half of my body is dead, but I am as whole
as ever. My inner feeling is not that I am half-dead and half-alive, I am as alive as
ever! Half of the body is gone, but my being is untouched by it.'
And slowly slowly his hands became dead, and his chest started sinking. And then he
said the last words. He said, 'My tongue will not be able to say any more words. It is
getting numb. But the last thing that I want to tell you is this: that although almost
ninety percent of my body is dead, I am a hundred percent alive. If it is an indication
of something, it shows that even when the body is one hundred percent dead, I will be
alive, because I have seen ninety percent of my body go, but I am as whole as before.
So ten percent more will go... You cannot see what is happening to me inside, but I
can see it.'
Socrates is not an ordinary philosopher as are the other Greek philosophers. Even his
own disciples, Plato, Aristotle... Aristotle, in fact, is not a disciple but an enemy. He
does not understand Socrates at all, and what he proposes is absolutely against
Socrates.
Socrates is a mystic. His philosophy is just a method of inquiry -- and a very
penetrating inquiry. He will not even leave death aside; he inquired into death. To the
very last moment he was true to his method of inquiry.
Death one sees only from the outside: you see other people dying. But to be alive is
different: you can see it from the inside. To be alive is to feel pain and pleasure, to
love and to fear. To be alive is to be able to create, to think of something which is not
and make it happen.
That's why the creative person only knows the highest form of life because when you
create you are at the optimum point of your energy. When you create you are part of
God. How one can do it is a mystery. How one can exist is a mystery. Every effect
must have a cause. That is what we call the law of causation -- that is what we are
taught. But I can see no cause for the effect which I am.
I wake up riding on a miracle. My reason serves me well, but with the mystery of my
being it fails. My reason itself is a tool of this mystery, hence it cannot know it.
You have to look within. To see what life is, first you have to feel it from the interior.
And the best way to feel your life is to be creative, because then you are at your
maximum. Ordinarily, people live at their minimum, and whatsoever people go on
doing can be done at the minimum because those are just habits; those are just routine
things your body has learned. They have been transferred from your consciousness to
the robot part of your body which goes on functioning on its own -- as, for example,
once you have learned to drive. When you first learn, you are very alive, very alert,
because there is danger. You have to be alert -- you don't know what is going to
happen. You have to keep aware of so many things: the steering wheel, the road, the
clutch, the gears, the accelerator, the brakes -- so many things to be aware and alert
about -- and the traffic, and the people passing by, and the cars passing by. But once
you have learned, your knowledge is transferred to the robot part of your body. Then
you need not bother; you can talk to your friend, you can sing a song, you can smoke,
you can listen to the radio, and your body goes on doing. You need not be alert -- only
exceptionally. If some accident is going to happen, you will wake up for a moment
because the danger is so great and the danger is so unknown that the robot part cannot
face it. It has not happened before; it is new.
Ordinary life becomes a mechanical routine, and you start living at the minimum. You
never flare up to your maximum. In creativity you flare up.
And that is going to be one of my messages to my sannyasins. Be creative, because to
be creative is worship. To be creative is prayer, to be creative is meditation. And to be
creative is to be close to God. There is no need to go to the Kaaba, because God is
here as much as in the Kaaba. There is no need to go to the Himalayas, because God
is everywhere equally available -- but available only to those who live at their
maximum, whose life flame is not a dull flame, who pour their whole energy into it.
And that happens only through creativity.
So, to me, the definition of a sannyasin is not the definition of the old kind of saint,
sitting there dull and dead. The definition of a sannyasin is to be creative. Dance, sing,
create music, paint, sculpt, or whatsoever you feel like doing. Find out what is your
innermost joy and do it! And doing means: bring it from the invisible to the visible.
Doing means: make the dream exist on the earth. Let the dream become actual.
Transform the potential into the actual. And that is the greatest joy there is. The real
bliss is attained only when you are able to bring something from the unknown to the
known, when you make, create, when you are able to transform a dream into reality,
when you have helped God. When in a certain way, in your own way, you have made
the world a little more beautiful, when you have enhanced its joy, then you are a
sannyasin.
And to know this way, your inner life, will help you to know that you are deathless,
because once you know who you are in your utter capacity, when your inner torch is
burning from both ends together, at the optimum, then you will know there is no death.
And at the optimum your third-eye centre starts functioning -- and only at the
optimum. So don't live life as a drag. Don't live it as if it is a burden, a duty to be
fulfilled, make it a dance, let it be a celebration.
IMMORTALITY IS CONTAINED IN THIS AND ALSO THE OVERCOMING OF
THE WORLD.
If you can allow your flame of life to reach the third eye, you will see there is no
death. And you will suddenly see that you are no more attached to the world.
Now, the difference has to be remembered. The old sannyas, the so-called, old
religious way of life, has been teaching people to renounce the world. I don't teach
renunciation, I teach you to bring your life energy to the optimum. And once you have
seen the true in your being, the world carries no meaning anymore. The higher has
happened, the lower becomes insignificant. You need not renounce it; it has already
dropped. You need not escape anywhere. You can live in the world, but you have
overcome it. And remember, escaping and overcoming are two totally different things.
The real sannyasin has to overcome the world, not renounce it.
THE LIGHT IS NOT IN THE BODY ALONE, NOR IS IT ONLY OUTSIDE THE
BODY.
And once you have seen the light inside, then you will become aware that it is not
only inside, it is also on the outside. It is not confined to you. Remember, darkness is
individual, light is universal Death is individual, life is universal. Misery is individual,
bliss is universal. For misery to exist, you have to exist -- you have to exist as separate.
And for bliss to come into existence, you have to become part of the whole, in
harmony with the whole.
THE LIGHT IS NOT IN THE BODY ALONE, NOR IS IT ONLY OUTSIDE THE
BODY. MOUNTAINS AND RIVERS AND THE GREAT EARTH ARE LIT BY
SUN AND MOON; ALL THAT IS THIS LIGHT.
Once you have seen it on the inside you will recognize it everywhere: in the moon, in
the sun... All light is the same -- inner and outer make no difference.
THEREFORE IT IS NOT ONLY WITHIN THE BODY. UNDERSTANDING AND
CLARITY, PERCEPTION AND ENLIGHTENMENT, AND ALL MOVEMENTS
(OF THE SPIRIT) ARE LIKEWISE THIS LIGHT...
It is the same light that you see in the moon, and that you see inside yourself in the
third eye. Once you have seen that it is the same light, the inner and the outer are no
longer distinct. The inner is the outer, the outer is the inner. That's why the Zen
Masters say that SAMSARA IS NIRVANA, the world -- this very world -- is
enlightenment. This very body the Buddha, this very earth the paradise. That's why
when Buddha became enlightened, he said, 'It is incredible, it is unbelievable that the
moment I became enlightened, the whole existence became enlightened with me.'
Down the centuries Buddhist meditators have been meditating over it, 'What does he
mean? What does he want to say -- "The moment I became enlightened the whole
existence became enlightened"? But how can it be? -- because there are still so many
unenlightened people. What can he mean?' The meditator himself thinks, 'I am as yet
unenlightened, so how has the whole existence become enlightened?' It has become
enlightened for the Buddha because he has seen that the distinction between the inner
and the outer was nothing but the ego -- the small thin curtain of the ego. Once that
curtain has fallen there is nothing inner, nothing outer.
So Buddha cannot say, 'I have become enlightened.' He says, 'The whole has become
enlightened.' All the trees, and all the rivers, and all the mountains, and all the people,
and all the animals, and all the planets -- all have become enlightened, because now
he has no separate identity. He does not mean that you have become enlightened, he is
simply saying, 'I cannot say that I have become enlightened. I was in bondage, that
much I can say. I was ignorant, that much I can say. I was in misery, that much I can
say. But now, I am no more.'
Existence is blissful. Existence is full of light. And the inner and the outer light are the
same -- there is nothing inner, there is nothing outer. All distinctions disappear when
the light enters into the third eye -- the one eye, the single eye. All distinctions
disappear. The rainbow again becomes a single ray of white light.
Just the other day there was a question, 'Osho, why do you tell us to wear orange
when you wear white?'
It is just symbolic, just to tell you that you have to come to the point where colours
disappear and the single white ray remains without any distinctions.
UNDERSTANDING AND CLARITY, PERCEPTION AND ENLIGHTENMENT,
AND ALL MOVEMENTS (OF THE SPIRIT) ARE LIKEWISE THIS LIGHT;
THEREFORE IT IS NOT JUST SOMETHING OUTSIDE THE BODY.
It is neither outside nor inside, it is everywhere -- inside too, outside too. And it is the
same light -- the same light that you see shining on the greenery and the flower, and
dancing on the lotus. It is the same light that becomes clarity inside -- enlightenment,
perception, understanding.
And remember, the Master says, understanding, not knowledge. The Master says,
clarity, not answers. One simply becomes so clear that the questions disappear. Not
that you attain to some answers, only you are so clear that the confusion is no more
there, that's all. It is absence of questions not presence of answers, hence it is called
understanding, not knowledge.
Just the other day, Aniruddha also asked, 'What is the difference between our
knowledge and your knowledge? I don't see any difference,' he says.
The difference is not in knowledge. He must have been thinking that I know more
than he knows. Just the contrary is the case. I don't know more than you know; in fact,
you know and I have no knowledge. I am only clear -- a clarity, an understanding, not
knowledge. Here are many people who know more than me, and that is their problem.
They will have to drop that knowledge.
I don't know anything, there is only clarity. When you ask me a question, it is not that
I have an answer for it, but I just focus my clarity on it -- try to understand -- and
whatsoever response comes out of the clarity I give to you. It is not knowledge, it is
just a capacity to see.
Knowledge makes people blind. Their eyes become so full of knowledge they cannot
see. Even before you have asked the question they have the ready-made answer there.
They are ready to answer it. They don't listen to your question, they don't listen to the
questioner, they don't listen to his being, they don't look into him to see what he
means, they have a ready-made answer. They are in a hurry to answer you -- and they
must prove the answer with arguments and scriptures, and they must give all kinds of
support to it.
I have only a kind of understanding, a vision, a capacity to see. That's why the Master
says: UNDERSTANDING AND CLARITY, PERCEPTION AND
ENLIGHTENMENT... It is not knowledge, it is just an utterly cloudless sky within.
THE LIGHT-FLOWER OF HEAVEN AND EARTH FILLS ALL THE THOUSAND
PACES. BUT ALSO THE LIGHT-FLOWER OF THE INDIVIDUAL BODY
PASSES THROUGH HEAVEN AND COVERS THE EARTH.
It is a light-flower, this whole existence. This is the experience of the mystics: that
existence is made of nothing other than light. It is all light; light is the basic
constituent of existence. And modern physics agrees with it. They call it electricity.
'Light' is much too poetic a word for them, they have to drag it down to earth; it
becomes 'electricity'. But what they are saying is exactly the same.
Matter has disappeared from modern physics, matter is no more. At the deepest core
of matter is nothing but electricity, electrons, electrical particles dancing, energy
particles dancing, with no matter in them, no weight. This has been experienced by
mystics down the centuries, unexceptionally; whether the mystic was born in India or
in China or in Tibet makes no difference. This has been the most fundamental
experience of all the mystics: that the existence is made of light and nothing nothing
else.
THE SECRET OF THE GOLDEN FLOWER says, 'This light, this flower of light,
these petals of light fill all the spaces outside and also inside.'
THEREFORE, AS SOON AS THE LIGHT IS CIRCULATING, HEAVEN AND
EARTH, MOUNTAINS AND RIVERS, ARE ALL CIRCULATING WITH IT AT
THE SAME TIME.
The same thing that Buddha said is said in different words. The moment you see light
circulating in you, you will be able to see the dawn of light all over. Stars moving, and
mountains and rivers -- all will be nothing but streams of light, a tremendous dance of
light energy.
TO CONCENTRATE THE SEED-FLOWER OF THE HUMAN BODY ABOVE IN
THE EYES, THAT IS THE GREAT KEY OF THE HUMAN BODY. CHILDREN.
TAKE HEED! IF FOR A DAY YOU DO NOT PRACTISE MEDITATION, THIS
LIGHT STREAMS OUT, WHO KNOWS WHITHER? IF YOU MEDITATE FOR A
QUARTER OF AN HOUR, BY IT YOU CAN DO AWAY WITH THE TEN
THOUSAND AEONS AND A THOUSAND BIRTHS. ALL METHODS END IN
QUIETNESS. THIS MARVELLOUS MAGIC CANNOT BE FATHOMED.
The Master Lu-tsu says only fifteen minutes in twenty-four hours will do. If you can
sit silently for fifteen minutes, concentrated in the third eye, that will be enough to
change your whole future. You will not need to be born into the body again. You will
not need to be thrown into the world again. You have learned the lesson, you have
become worthy of moving without the body and the limitation of the body. Your soul
will be free, unentangled, without any bondage. And then there will be no death, no
birth. You will be an eternal flowering of light in this infinite existence.
Only fifteen minutes? Yes, only fifteen minutes can do the miracle. But people are not
even ready to give fifteen minutes to quietness, to silence.
I have heard...
When Ignatius Loyola heard the news that an unfriendly man had been elected Pope,
he was asked what he would do if the new head of the Church should order the
Society of Jesus dissolved, the work in which Loyola had invested his whole life. He
replied, 'Fifteen minutes in prayer and all will be the same.'
An immensely significant reply.
An unfriendly Pope had come into power and there was every possibility that Loyola's
whole work would be dissolved. He had created a small society of mystics. The work
was esoteric, and Christianity has always been against esoteric work, has always been
afraid of the mystics because these are the dangerous people. They bring truth to the
world, and once they bring truth to the world, people are no longer interested in rituals,
impotent rituals. Who cares about the Church then?
So Christianity has consistently been destroying all mystic schools so that nobody can
go outside the Church, so that nobody can have any other door to reach God, so that
everybody has to come to the priest. Whenever the desire to seek and search for God
arises, no alternatives are to be left. Because of this stupid idea, Christianity destroyed
religion in the whole world, because there are different people and they need different
types of schools, and they need different types of techniques. And those who are
really sincere in their search have to find esoteric groups. They cannot become part of
the formal religion -- that is not enough for them; it is very lukewarm, it is very
superficial .
In the West, real religion had to go underground because of the Church. People have
to create many false facades to hide behind. Alchemy was one of the facades. The real
work was something else: the alchemist was trying to create around himself the idea
that he was working to transform baser metal into gold. This was allowed. The
Church was very happy. If you are trying to turn baser metal into gold, it is perfectly
okay, you can do it. If you succeed, the Church will have more gold, that's all; there
was no fear about it. But this was just a facade, it was not real alchemy; it was just on
the outside. Behind the curtain the real work was totally different: it was transforming
the lower being into the higher being. It was exactly the secret of the Golden Flower:
how to transform your sexuality, the baser metal, into spirituality, the gold.
But unnecessary trouble had to be taken, they had to make arrangements on the
outside such that the society remained convinced that their work was something to do
with gold. And everybody is interested in gold. The Church is very interested in gold,
not in God.
Loyola was a great mystic. He had created the Society of Jesus. And a very
antagonistic Pope was in power. Somebody said to him, 'What will you do? What will
happen now? The Society can be dissolved by the order of the Pope.'
Loyola said, 'Fifteen minutes in prayer, and all will be the same. It will just take me
fifteen minutes to go deep into meditation, that's all. Because whenever I am there,
nothing matters. Nothing matters at all.'
Master Lu-tsu says: Just fifteen minutes...
... BY IT YOU CAN DO AWAY WITH THE TEN THOUSAND AEONS AND A
THOUSAND BIRTHS. ALL METHODS END IN QUIETNESS.
Remember it. Whatsoever the method, the goal is the same: quietness, utter silence
inside, thoughtlessness, only consciousness without any content.
THIS MARVELLOUS MAGIC CANNOT BE FATHOMED.
It is an unfathomable depth. When thoughts disappear and you are simply silent, then
the silence is a bottomless abyss; it cannot be fathomed. The Pacific Ocean can be
fathomed -- it has a five-mile depth; but the Pacific Ocean inside you cannot be
fathomed -- it is infinite. You can go on digging and digging and diving deeper and
deeper and you will not come to fathom it, you will not come to the bottom of it at all.
Only thoughts can be measured, thoughtlessness is immeasurable. Hence,
thoughtlessness is another name for God. But remember, thoughtlessness should not
be a kind of sleep, because that is very ordinary. It happens every day: deep in sleep,
when dreams disappear, you fall into that abyss. That's why deep sleep is so
rejuvenating, so refreshing. In the morning you feel alive again, new, reborn. But that
is unconscious. Patanjali has said deep sleep and SAMADHI are very similar, with
only one difference: in sleep you are unconscious, in SAMADHI you are conscious.
But you go to the same space, the same unfathomable, magical space within you,
where there is no thought, no desire, no vibration in your mind, all is quiet. All
methods lead to it -- Yoga, Tantra, Tao, Hassidism, Sufism -- all methods lead to it
from different angles; they have been devised for different people.
BUT WHEN THE PRACTICE IS STARTED, ONE MUST PRESS ON FROM THE
OBVIOUS TO THE PROFOUND, FROM THE COARSE TO THE FINE.
In the beginning great effort is needed. One MUST press on from the obvious to the
profound. What is obvious? -- the obvious is your continuous process of thought. And
what is profound? -- just a state of no-thought. What is gross? -- all contents of the
mind are gross. And what is subtle? -- a state of no-content is subtle. One must go
pressing on. In the beginning, great effort will be needed. In the beginning, you have
to be utterly committed to the work, only then does the blissful moment arise when
meditation becomes effortless.
First, meditation has to be masculine energy. Only then, in the end, can it become
feminine energy. That's why my insistence is on dynamic methods in the beginning.
Bring all your effort to the maximum. Put all that you have at stake, don't hold
anything back, and then, one day, you will be able to relax without effort. Just by
closing your eyes you will be able to reach the third eye.
... WHEN THE PRACTICE IS STARTED, ONE MUST PRESS ON FROM THE
OBVIOUS TO THE PROFOUND,FROM THE COARSE TO THE FINE.
EVERYTHING DEPENDS ON THERE BEING NO INTERRUPTION.
And make it a regular phenomenon.
THE BEGINNING AND THE END OF THE PRACTICE MUST BE ONE. IN
BETWEEN THERE ARE COOLER AND WARMER MOMENTS, THAT GOES
WITHOUT SAYING. BUT THE GOAL MUST BE TO REACH THE VASTNESS
OF HEAVEN AND THE DEPTHS OF THE SEA, SO THAT ALL METHODS SEEM
QUITE EASY AND TAKEN FOR GRANTED. ONLY THEN HAVE WE
MASTERED IT.
The real mastery is when no effort is needed, when all efforts can be dropped. The
real mastery is when no method is needed, when all methods can be dropped. The real
mastery is when meditation is no longer a thing to do but has become your very state.
You live in it, you walk in it, you sit in it: 'Sitting in Zen, walking in Zen.' You eat in it,
you sleep in it. You ARE it.
That moment also comes. But in the beginning one has to go with all one's energy.
Remember, just as water evaporates at a hundred degrees' heat -- not at ninety-nine,
not at ninety-nine point nine, but exactly at a hundred degrees -- so whenever you put
your total energy, one hundred degrees, at stake, immediately the baser metal turns
into gold. Immediately the sexual energy has penetrated into the spiritual world.
Immediately the energy that was going out has taken a
one-hundred-and-eighty-degree turn, and the two eyes become one eye. And then all
that is inner and all that is outer is enlightened.
Jesus has said, 'Cleave the wood and you will find me. Strike the stone and I am
there.' This is the ultimate state: when you cleave the wood and you find God, and you
strike the stone and you find God. Then you walk on God, in God, as God. Then you
breathe God, then you eat God, you drink God, because all is God.
This ultimate experience is what Master Lu-tsu says is released. And it is in the third
eye.
The Secret of Secrets, Vol 1
Chapter #10
Chapter title: The Zorba-Buddha Synthesis
20 August 1978 am in Buddha Hall
Archive code:
7808200
ShortTitle:
SOS110
Audio: Yes
Video:
No
Length: 103 mins
The first question:
Question 1
OSHO, ALL MY LIFE I HAVE SAID YES AND NOW THAT I AM HERE WITH
YOU AND THE YES SEEMS REALLY RIGHT, THERE COMES ONLY NO.
WHAT IS THIS NO?
Bhadra, it is very natural. If all your life you have been saying yes, it must have been
false, it must have been pseudo. You must have forced yourself to say yes, you must
have repressed your no continuously. And I teach relaxation, and I teach expression.
So the repressed no is coming up, surfacing. Allow it. Please don't repress it anymore.
If you repress it here, then where are you going to express it? Once it is expressed,
you will be free of it, and then the real yes will come. The yes that you have known
up to now was not real. You have been cultivating this yes. It was just on the surface.
Deep down the no has always existed in you.
But this is how we are brought up. This is how we are conditioned. This is how people
have become utterly false, hypocritical, split. Their face says one thing, their being is
saying just the opposite. This is how the whole of humanity has been turned into a
kind of schizophrenia.
My approach is that yes and no are both absolutely necessary, part of the inner rhythm.
The man who cannot say no cannot say yes either; and if he says yes, his yes will be
impotent. Only the man who can say no vitally can say yes vitally. They depend on
each other, just as life and death depend on each other, just as darkness and light
depend on each other, just as love and hate depend on each other. This is the intrinsic
polarity of life.
In a better world, with more freedom, with more understanding, a child will not be
taught to say yes when he feels like saying no, he will be taught courage. Whenever
he feels like saying no, he will HAVE to say no. And then his yes will have meaning.
A child will not be taught religion, because religion is yes-saying. He will not be
forced to become a theist -- Hindu, Christian, Mohammedan -- he will be encouraged
by the parents, by the school, by the university, to be honest, to be sincere, and to wait
for the real yes to come on its own.
The world has become so false. Can't you see from where this falsity is arising?
Millions of people go to the churches, temples, mosques, GURUDWARAS, and not a
single person is religious. What kind of neurosis is this? They go just as a formality,
they go because they have been taught to go, they go because they have become
addicted to the habit of going. It is just a habit. If they don't go, they feel guilty. If
they don't go they feel as if they are betraying their parents, their society. If they go,
there is no joy in it. They simply drag themselves into it. They simply wait there until
the ritual ends, the prayer ends, so that they can escape out of the temple, out of the
church. It is a bogus kind of religion.
And the reason is that they have never been allowed to say no. No has to come first,
only then can yes come. To really be a theist, first one has to go through the process of
atheism. To really be a believer in God, first one has to go through the dark night of
doubt, only then -- the dawn. There is no other alternative.
It is good, Bhadra, that the no is arising. You are being true for the first time in your
life. Let it happen, and the yes will follow just as day follows night.
But this mischief has been done to you -- and in the name of great things: God, prayer,
country, love, religion, church, Jesus, Buddha, Krishna. In the name of these great
things much mischief has been done to you. You have been manipulated. And what is
the outcome? You have become a plastic phenomenon; you don't have that sincerity
which can make a person really religious.
My own observation is this: that a person who has not said no to God will never be
able to say yes, or if he says it, his yes will be pointless.
The so-called religion is what Gregory Bateson calls the double-bind. One is ordered
to do two things which are mutually exclusive: to be sincere and to believe. How can
you be sincere if you are told to believe? To believe means to be insincere. To believe
means to believe in something that you don't know, to which your whole heart says,
'No, I don't know. How can I believe?'
Belief is insincerity. And you have been told to be sincere and to believe. This creates
a double-bind in you. Your religion, your so-called religion, is based on insincerity -how can it be religious? The very beginning is poisoned, the very source has gone
sour. No child should be taught religion. Every child should be taught inquiry, doubt,
logic, reason.
And why are you so afraid of logic, doubt and reason? Because if a child really goes
deep into doubt, he will find the futility of it on his own. And out of that finding trust
arises. And then that trust has beauty, grandeur.
If a child reasons to the very end, he will come to the point where he will be able to
see that now reasoning has come to an end but existence goes on and on. Existence is
something beyond reasoning. But let every child feel it in his own guts!
To be true a religion has to be a religion of the guts, not of belief. Let the child think
as much as he can, to his full capacity; let him burn with doubt, logic, reasoning, to
the maximum, and he will see the limitations of the intellect. It is bound to happen.
And when the limitations of the intellect have been seen, experienced, by yourself,
you start moving into the beyond; you start surpassing the mind.
Belief is of the mind. This so-called yes-saying is of the mind. I teach you another
kind of yes, which is not afraid of no, another kind of trust, which is not afraid of
scepticism, which on the contrary uses scepticism as a jumping-board, which uses
doubt as a process of cleansing.
Truth has to be trusted: to trust is an act of faith. But any statement of truth has to be
tested too: to test it is an act of doubt. Faith and doubt both serve truth -- this is what I
teach you. Faith and doubt are two wings of the bird called trust. If you cut off one
wing, the bird cannot fly. Yes and no are two wings; use them, and use them in their
totality. Never be insincere, not even in the name of God.
Sincerity is far more valuable than any dogma, than any Christianity, Hinduism, Islam.
Sincerity is the foundation. But to be sincere means you have to give expression to all
that is within you. Sometimes it is yes, and sometimes it is no. And you have to accept
both.
So, Bhadra, it is something beautiful that is happening, don't be worried. I am not
trying to force any yes on you, I am simply helping you to go through the whole
process of both yes and no, so that one day you become aware that they are not
enemies, not opposites, but complementaries.
Man is a question mark. And it is a blessing -- celebrate it. It is a blessing because
only man is a question mark. No dog is. No tree is. The rose bush is beautiful, but not
as beautiful as man, and the moon is beautiful, but not as beautiful as man -- because
they are all unconscious. Only man is consciously on a quest. And how can you be on
a quest if you don't have a question mark in your being?
God sends you with a question mark in your being. Celebrate it -- it is a great
responsibility, a great heritage. Ask questions. Inquire. Doubt. And don't be worried,
because I know that if you doubt long enough you will arrive at trust. And that arrival
is incredible, because then you have arrived on your own. It is your own experience; it
is no longer belief, it is knowing.
Sri Aurobindo was asked by a philosopher, 'Do you believe in God?' and he said, 'No.'
The philosopher was, for a moment, shocked. He had come a long way, believing that
this man had come to know God, and this man says, 'I don't believe in God. For a
moment he could not gather courage to ask anything else. Shocked, he was dumb.
Then he said, 'But I thought that you had seen God.'
Sri Aurobindo laughed and said, 'Yes, I have seen, that's why I say I don't believe.
Belief is out of ignorance. I know! I don't "believe".'
And remember it: you have to know, you are not here to believe. My help is available
for you to KNOW. Belief is a trick of the mind. Without knowing, it gives you the
feeling that you have known.
Man is a question mark -- and it is a blessing. Celebrate it, dance it, rejoice in it,
because without that question mark there could be no faith, or doubt -- nothing but
dead certainty. That's where animals live: in dead certainty. And that's why your
priests and your politicians want you to live in dead certainty.
Life hesitates. Life is uncertain. Life is insecure. That's why it is life: because it
moves.
Socrates is reported to have said, 'I would not like to become a contented pig. Rather
than being a contented pig, I would like to remain a discontented Socrates.'
Meditate over it. It is a statement of immense value. The pig is contented, absolutely
certain. That's why people who are stubborn and think themselves absolutely certain
are called piggish.
For example, poor Morarji Desai is called piggish.
People who are stubborn are bound to be stupid. A man who is alive moves into
uncertainties, moves into the unknown. He cannot live in a dead certainty. Certainty
simply means you have not doubted.
There is another kind of knowing which comes out of doubting, which comes out of
growth. And when that kind of knowing comes, again you are not certain. But now the
uncertainty has a totally different flavour. If you had asked Buddha about God he
would have kept quiet. That's where he is far superior to Sri Aurobindo. He would
have kept absolutely silent, he would not have said yes or no. Why? -- because he
says, 'The ultimate is so tremendously vast that to say yes will be wrong, to say no
will be wrong, because our words are so small they cannot contain the ultimate. The
ultimate can only be conveyed through silence.'
A Zen Master was asked, 'Can you say something about God?' He remained utterly
silent, he listened to the question with open eyes and then he closed his eyes. A few
moments went by. For the questioner those few moments seemed very long. He was
waiting and becoming restless, and the Master had moved into some other space.
There was great ecstasy on his face but no answer. That ecstasy was the answer. There
was utter silence in his being, and the silence was vibrant all around him -- you could
have almost touched it, it was so solid. But the restless questioner was not aware of it
at all, he was too concerned with his question, and he was waiting for the answer. He
shook the Master, and said, 'What are you doing? I have asked a question, and you
closed your eyes and you are sitting in silence. Answer it!'
And the Master says, 'But that's what I was doing. This is my answer.'
Certainly this is far superior to Sri Aurobindo's answer. But the man, the questioner,
was not satisfied. He wanted something conveyed verbally. He insisted, and he would
not leave the Master. So the Master said, 'Okay.'
They were sitting on a river bank. The Master wrote in the sand with his finger:
Meditation.
Now, the question is about God, and the answer is about meditation. It is utterly
irrelevant. And the questioner was right to say, 'Are you joking or something? I am
asking about God, and you write on the sand: Meditation.'
And the Master said, 'That's all that I can say or that I am allowed to say. You ask
about the goal, I talk about the way, because the goal is so incomprehensible, so
mysterious, that nothing can be said about it. I can simply sit in silence. If you have
eyes to see, see! If you have ears to hear, hear! Hear my silence, and the song that my
silence is, and the music that arises in it. If you cannot hear it, that simply shows you
need meditation. So meditate.'
The man said, 'Just this much -- one word, "meditation"? Won't you elaborate on it a
little?'
He wrote again in bigger letters: MEDITATION. That was his elaboration .
The man was puzzled and he said, 'But you are simply repeating. Just writing it in
bigger letters won't help.'
So he wrote again in even bigger letters: MEDITATION. He said, 'Nothing more can
be said about it. You will have to do it. You will have to be it.'
There is a kind of uncertainty when you don't know, because how can you be certain
when you don't know? And there is a kind of uncertainty when you know, because
how can you be certain about the ultimate? It is so vast; to be certain about it will
make it small, to be certain about it will show that it is in your grasp, that it is in your
fist. And God cannot be possessed; on the contrary, you have to be possessed by God.
Accept your no, accept your yes. And don't think that they are opposites; they are not.
Just as there can be no courage without danger, so there can be no faith without
uncertainty, without doubt. Risk is part of the game that we are born to play. We must
learn to lean on possibilities -- not on certainties but on possibilities.
I can only say to you God is possible. I can only say to you yes is possible. Lean on
the possibilities, don't ask for certainties. Because you ask for certainties, you create
authorities. Out of your need to be certain you become victims of people who are
stubborn, ignorant, but certain. Only parrots can be certain because they have
ready-made answers. Pundits can be certain because pundits are nothing but parrots.
A real man of knowledge will help you to be silent: will help you to go through yes
and through no, through faith and through doubt, through warmer moments and
through cooler moments; will help you to go through days and nights, peaks and
valleys. And he will not teach any dogma, but will only teach you courage, adventure,
quest.
Listening to your question, I remembered two stories.
There was a boy five or six years old who had acquired the habit of using swear
words in his ordinary conversation. His parents tried their best to break him of this
habit, and in final desperation hit upon a plan which they thought would work. They
called their son into a family consultation and laid out the facts before him, saying,
'Now, son, we just can't have a little boy in our home who continues to use this kind
of language. So we have decided that if you cannot break yourself of the habit,
something drastic must be done. We are giving you fair warning that the very next
time we hear a swear word in your conversation, you are simply going to have to pack
your bag and move out of this house. We can't put up with that language any longer.
Do you understand?'
He did not say anything, although he did nod his head. But the habit, it seemed, was
too great for him to break all at once, and they soon heard him interspersing his
favourite swear words in conversation.
His mother said, 'Son, we have given you fair warning and now you are going to
move out. Go pack your bag.'
The boy went to his bedroom reluctantly, packed his suitcase, said goodbye to his
mother and left. He did not know what in the world he was going to do, so he sat on
the front steps trying to collect his thoughts. As he waited there a neighbour came by,
looked at him and asked, 'Is your mother home, dear?'
He looked at her with a sour face, and said, 'How the hell should I know? I don't live
here anymore.'
You cannot force, you cannot repress, you cannot order these things. These things
need understanding. And parents are doing it all the time, just saying, 'Don't do this,
do that'; just giving commandments, never giving understanding insight. Children
need insight, not commandments. They need your love, they need your help to
understand things. They don't want to imitate you. In fact, they should not be forced to
imitate you, because if you force them to imitate you, you will be destroying their
very soul. Give your love and give them freedom, and help them to become aware.
Help them to be more meditative.
But that is not being done. We simply force. Forcing a thing seems to be a very
short-cut procedure. Who bothers? Because you don't love enough, that's why you
don't bother. Who bothers to give an insight to a child? It is very simple: 'Just go and
do this because I say so, because I am your father and I know more because I am
older than you.' The child may be forced to do a certain thing because he is helpless,
but deep down he will carry the wound. And, Bhadra, you must have been carrying
many wounds deep down.
My love to you, my help to you is bringing your wounds to the surface. It is good,
because once the wounds come to the surface, in the sunlight they can be healed.
There is no other way to heal them. You are coming to health. Don't be afraid. Let all
those nos come up. They will be released, and you will be free of them.
A little girl had disobeyed her parents and they decided she should be punished. They
took her upstairs to the bedroom, put her in the clothes-closet, closed the door and
said, 'Now dear, you just take time to think it over, and see if you can't make up your
mind to be more loving toward your parents and not disobey them.'
After a few minutes the parents consciences began to bother them, and they went up,
knocked on the door, and said, 'Dear, how are you?'
'Oh, I am fine.'
'What are you doing?' asked her mother.
'Well,' she replied, 'I spit on your dress, I spit on your coat, I spit on your shoes, and I
am just sitting here waiting for more spit.'
The second question:
Question 2
OSHO, PLEASE SAY SOMETHING ABOUT THIS NEWS ITEM: THE INDIAN
EXPRESS OF 18TH AUGUST REPORTS THAT THE RAJNEESH FILM WON'T
REFLECT THE REAL IMAGE OF INDIA. THE UNION INFORMATION
MINISTER, L.K. ADVANI SAID IN THE PARLIAMENT, 'FOREIGN
TELEVISION AND FILM UNITS HAVE BEEN REFUSED PERMISSION TO
DOCUMENT THE ACTIVITIES OF THE RAJNEESH ASHRAM, AS IT IS FELT
THAT A FILM ON THE ACTIVITIES OF THE ASHRAM WOULD NOT REFLECT
FAVOURABLY ON INDIA'S IMAGE ABROAD.'
This is really surprising from a politician, because the politicians are the people who
destroy the images of countries. From the peon to the Prime Minister, the politicians
are the people who are the most corrupt. Their corruption is not going to help the
image of the country in the world. They should think about it. Their continuous
quarrelling for stupid reasons destroys the image of a country -- and nowhere else can
you find more quarrelsome politicians than in India. And the quarrels have no
ideological basis at all; the quarrels are simply quarrels which are personal -- their
own personal greed.
The Indian politicians seem to be the most greedy -- greedy for power, hungry for
power; continuously fighting with each other. Their whole time is wasted in
quarrelling. The country is going to the dogs, and sitting in New Delhi, all that they
do is fight with each other -- how to topple the other. Everyone wants to become
Prime Minister. And once you become Prime Minister, all that you do is to protect
your prime ministership. Your whole time is wasted in becoming the Prime Minister -almost your whole life. Morarji Desai's whole life was wasted in becoming Prime
Minister. Now, at the age of eighty-three, he has arrived. Now the whole time is
wasted -- how to remain in the seat till you die?
And once you are in the seat you don't want to die. You can do anything. He drinks his
own urine. He thinks he is going to become immortal through it.
Now, is this urine-drinking Prime Minister helping the Indian image abroad? They
should think about it. They should not be worried about me and my people. But
politicians are the lowest as far as intelligence is concerned. They are the most
inferior people in the world.
I have heard...
A politician went to the psychoanalyst, and he said, 'I suffer from an inferiority
complex.'
The psychiatrist worked upon the politician -- many sessions of analysis. And then,
finally he said to him, 'You need not worry.' The politician said, 'I need not worry? So
there is no problem?' And the psychiatrist said, 'Yes, there is no problem, because you
are simply inferior. You need not suffer from any inferiority complex. It is simply so.'
Once I was staying in a circuit house with a politician. In the morning we were sitting
on the lawn. He was reading the newspaper. That's all they read -- that is their Koran,
Bible, Gita.
Suddenly he looked up at me and said, 'I'll never be able to understand how people
always seem to die in alphabetical order.'
And another time, I was travelling in a train and, unfortunately, in the same
compartment was a politician. I say 'unfortunately' because they stink. Nothing stinks
like politics. It is the dirtiest thing in the world.
He started talking to me, and I asked him if he had heard the latest joke about
politicians.
'I am warning you,' he said, 'I am a politician myself.'
'That's all right,' I told him, 'I will tell it very very slowly.'
I am not part of any tradition, that's what is creating trouble for the Indian politicians.
I don't belong to the past, I belong to the future. They cannot understand me -- it is
impossible for them. If I had belonged to the past, there would have been no difficulty.
But I don't belong to the past. A really religious person never belongs to the past.
Buddha never belonged to the past, that's why Hindus were angry. Jesus never
belonged to the past, that's why Jews were angry.Jesus, Buddha, Krishna -- they are
all pointing to the future, not to the past.
Do not embrace the past or you will have missed the whole point. Tradition is not
religion. Religion is always a surpassing, a transcending, a going beyond.
If I had been a Hindu there would have been no difficulty. I am not. If I had been a
Mohammedan there would have been no difficulty. I am not -- neither am I a Buddhist
or a Jaina. And they are very confused: they cannot categorize me, they cannot
pigeonhole me. No religious person can ever be pigeonholed, because basically
religion is freedom -- freedom from the past, freedom to be herenow, and freedom to
be available to the future.
What I am trying to bring to you is something of the future. People will be able to
understand it only after hundreds of yearS. And then these same politicians will pay
respect, as they pay respect to Jesus. And these are the people who crucified him, and
these are the people who stoned Buddha and Mahavir. And these are the people who
poisoned Socrates. These are the same people. Beware of them!
They are always against the future. Why are they against the future? -- because their
vested interest is always rooted in the past. They can manipulate the past, they cannot
manipulate the future. They can exploit the past, they cannot exploit the future. They
can exploit irreligious people, they cannot exploit religious people. They can exploit
the pseudo-religious very easily, there is no problem in it, because a pseudo-religious
person is almost a shadow, not a reality. And the pseudo-religious person is always
ready to be manipulated, to be transformed, into a slave.
I am creating rebellious people here, rebellious in a multi-dimensional way. The
politicians are bound to be afraid. And they will find excuses.
Now he says, 'The Rajneesh film won't reflect the real image of India...'
I would like to say to him: Do you understand the meaning of the real? The real
means that which is happening, and this ashram is happening, I am happening. Any
image of India that does not include me will be unreal -- only because it will not
include something which IS happening. What do you mean by 'real image'?
A real image means: that which is existential, that which is happening. You may not
like me, you may not like my people, but you cannot say that I don't reflect the real
image of India. You may be against me, but still I am part of this country. I am here,
and I am going to be here! And my people are going to increase. This is part of reality.
This may be just a seed now, but soon it will become a great tree. How can you deny
its reality?
We have 200,000 sannyasins all over the world. Nobody else can claim that. And we
have almost a million lay followers, lay disciples. It is part of reality now. Three
thousand sannyasins are almost always present here. Every year nearabout 25,000
people visit from all the countries all over the world. No other place can claim this.
How can you say this is not real?
I think, Mr. Advani, you will have to learn language a little bit more. Real is that
which is happening. It may not be according to you -- right, that is another point -- but
it is real. And I would like to tell you also that it is not something which is alien to the
spirit of India, what is happening is this phenomenon which is really the very soul of
India. It happened in Buddha's time, it happened in Mahavir's time, it happened in
Krishna's time. It has happened again and again. The REAL India -- if you really want
to say what the real India is -- consists not of politicians but of the mystics. The
politicians come and go; the mystics remain.
Do you remember any politician's name of the time of Buddha? Where are they? And
they must have been as noisy as Mr. Advani. In their own time they must have been
very noisy; they must have created much fuss. Do you remember the politicians who
crucified Jesus? And if you remember the name of Pontius Pilate, you remember it
only because he crucified Jesus; otherwise who would have remembered? There have
been thousands of governor-generals in the world.
A politician said to the dying Socrates, 'We are sorry that you had to be sentenced to
death.'
Socrates opened his eyes and said, 'Don't be worried. You cannot kill me, I will live.
And remember, your name will be remembered only because of me.'
And that is so.
The real India is a quest of the innermost soul of man -- not the geography, not the
political history, but the inner journey. The journey of meditation is the real India.
Mahavir represents it. Buddha represents it. Krishna and Christ and Nanak -- they
represent the real India. And I have the heritage of all of them -- and much more.
But it has been always so. If Advani were Minister of Broadcasting in Mahavir's time,
he would have stopped the BBC from filming Mahavir because Mahavir used to live
naked. Or, if he had been a minister in Lalla's time... Lalla was a mystic woman; she
lived naked. Certainly he would have prevented any television unit, any film unit
from approaching these people for the same reason: that they don't represent, they
don't reflect, the real image of India.
Does Mr. Advani reflect the real image of India? You will be gone down the drain
soon, I predict. By the next election you will be heard of no more. You and your
whole company will just go down the drain, because the country has seen that you
have deceived and cheated it. In the name of democracy all kinds of wrong people
have become powerful in India. And they have not done a single thing since they have
been in power except quarrel.
I must remind you of the three monkeys of Mahatma Gandhi. You must have heard of
them -- those three monkeys are very famous. He had always a statue of them.
Somebody from Japan or from China had presented him with three monkeys. One
monkey keeps his hands on his eyes, representing that you should not see that which
is wrong. Another monkey keeps his hands on his ears, symbolizing that you should
not hear that which is not worth hearing. And the third monkey keeps his hands on his
mouth: you should not say what is not worth saying, you should keep quiet.
These three monkeys have come to rule. Now they are called the TRIMURTI -- the
three monkeys are Mahatma Gandhi. The chief monkey keeps his hands on his ears;
he will not listen. The whole country is shouting, 'We are dying. We are starving. The
population is growing.' But he will not listen. His name is Mahatma Morarji Desai. He
will not listen. The whole country is crying, 'Your son is a criminal; his activities
should be investigated -- he is accumulating money by illegal means.' But he will not
listen. He is the chief monkey of Mahatma Gandhi. He keeps his ears shut and goes
on smiling; drinks his own urine and keeps himself healthy. That's all that he is doing.
The other monkey keeps his eyes shut, because he represents the untouchables, the
down-trodden, the lowest of the low -- and they are being burned alive! They are
being killed, butchered, murdered, raped. And never before has it happened like this.
All over the country their lives are in danger. And the man who represents them,
Jagjivan Ram, simply keeps his eyes closed, because if he opens his eyes and sees
what is happening he will not be able to say that he is their representative there.
But the third monkey, who was supposed to keep quiet and not say anything, has
betrayed the others and has said something -- Charan Singh. And because of his
saying something he has been thrown out of the trinity. But he is trying to get back in
again. And the other two monkeys are trying to keep him out because he started
saying things that he should not say. And why did he start saying things? -- because he
is getting old. Heart attacks and everything are happening to him, and he seems to
have no chance of becoming Prime Minister of India. He has to speak. Time is
running out fast. He has to struggle; he cannot keep quiet anymore.
These monkeyish people in New Delhi, do they think that THEY represent the real
India? They simply represent the neurotic part of India; they represent the people who
suffer from inferiority complexes. That's what the great psychologist Adler says: a
man goes into politics only if he suffers from an inferiority complex. He wants to
prove to himself that he is somebody. He has to prove it, otherwise there is great
anguish in his being, that 'I am inferior.' Untalented people, unintelligent people go
into politics. Those who are talented become artists, painters, poets, philosophers,
mystics, dancers. They have a thousand and one other beautiful things to do, not
politics. Only the third rate, the most unintelligent part of a country, moves into
politics. Those who cannot do anything else, at least they can go into politics. The
politicians are almost hidden criminals; the same quality of people become criminals.
If they cannot reach to power, they become destructive.
And what wrong is happening here that they are afraid should not be known in the
world at large?
One thing. A great synthesis is happening here -- something that has never happened
before, of which they are afraid, and which NEEDS to happen. It is a must for
humanity's survival. I am trying to create a great synthesis: the synthesis between
Zorba the Greek and Gautam the Buddha, the synthesis between materialism and
spiritualism. I am trying to create a spiritual materialism. These two things have
always remained separate, antagonistic to each other. And because of their antagonism
man has remained schizophrenic, because man is both body and soul. Man is not only
soul, man is not only body. To insist that man is only body is materialism. To insist
that man is only soul is spiritualism. Both are half, and both are wrong because they
are half, and both are unsatisfactory alone. They have proved unsatisfactory.
Man has to be accepted in his totality. As far as the body is concerned, a man has to be
Zorba the Greek. And as far as the soul is concerned, a man has to be Gautam the
Buddha. If body and soul can exist together, why can Buddha and Zorba not exist
together in a single man? That will be the highest synthesis.
The West has remained materialistic. It suffers from materialism. It has all the benefits
of materialism: great technology, beautiful houses, better medical facilities, longer life,
more beautiful bodies, more healthy bodies. It has all the benefits of materialism, it is
rich, affluent, but it suffers because it has lost its soul. The inner world is empty,
hollow. The West has all that is needed on the outside, but in managing the outside it
has leaned too much towards materialism and forgotten its own inner world. The
master is lost; the soul is lost. The kingdom is there but the king is dead, hence the
Western anguish, hence the Western search for the king. Hence the inquiry into
meditation, because meditation is the only way to seek and search for the inner king.
Where has he gone? Where is the inner light?
The East has remained spiritual. It has all the beauties of spirituality: calmness,
quietness, relaxedness, loving, compassion. It has a certain quality, a flavour of the
inner, but the body is sick, and there is great poverty and starvation all around. And
the outer world is ugly; it has suffered much too. And both are tense, because unless
you are whole you will be tense.
Can't you see that the East is no more interested in meditation? That's why you don't
see many Indians here. The East is no more interested in meditation, it is no more
interested in Buddha; its interest has shifted, and it is natural. It wants to know more
about physics, chemistry, engineering, medical science. Eastern talent goes to the
West, to Oxford, to Cambridge, to Harvard, to Princeton, to learn what has happened
in the West. Eastern talent has only one desire: how to go to the West and learn
something of modern science. The talented Eastern person cannot believe why you
Westerners are coming to the East. You have Oxford and you have Harvard, why are
you coming here? We are trying to get there and you are coming here. It looks so
absurd.
But the West has to come to the East. Harvard and Oxford have proved lacking. They
have given much, but they have not given inner richness. The West is affluent, and
because the West is affluent, the West has become more aware in contrast to its
affluence of the inner poverty, the inner black hole. The outside is so full of light that
the inner black hole in contrast has become very clear. The search has started -- the
West is moving towards the East, the East is moving towards the West.
The Eastern intellectual becomes a communist, and the Western intellectual becomes
a meditator. This can go on, and this can lead again to another kind of shift and to
misery. The West can become the East and the East can become the West, and the
problem will remain the same.
My effort here is a great experiment in bringing the East and West together.
Kipling has said that East and West shall never meet. I would like to tell Kipling -- he
must be somewhere in his grave, because he is a Christian and he will not leave the
grave before the Last Judgement Day -- Sir, East and West ARE meeting. They have
already met. They are meeting here in this place, which Advani says does not
represent the real image of India.
It represents the East, but it represents more than the East: it represents East plus West,
it represents the whole of humanity; it is an experiment in universal brotherhood. You
will find Christians, Jews, Mohammedans, Parsees, Jainas, Buddhists, Hindus -- all
kinds of people -- here. They have all dropped their identities, they have fallen into a
universal brotherhood. And you say this does not represent the real image of India?
And remember also: India is not a small country, it is a vast continent. It is not one
tradition, it is many traditions. But the people who are in power now are basically
Hindu chauvinists. A very wrong kind of person has come to power. Their whole idea
is of a very narrow Hinduism -- so narrow that it does not even contain the whole
current of Hinduism. Hence it is very much afraid.
If these people are allowed to have their say, sooner or later they will bulldoze
Khajuraho, Konarak, because they will say they don't represent the real image of
India.
Why are they so much against me? -- because here Yoga is happening, Sufism is
happening, Zen is happening, Tao is happening, Tantra also. And Tantra is creating
trouble.
These people in New Delhi are utterly sexually frustrated, repressed people.
Khajuraho is being born again here. To whom does Khajuraho belong? I have not
made that temple. I would suggest to Advani: Destroy Khajuraho, because the BBC
people may come and film it. It is a beautiful temple, one of the most beautiful on the
earth, because there is nothing more beautiful than love. There is nothing more
graceful then a couple in deep love, in a deep loving embrace. There is nothing more
divine than that. Something of God descends when a couple is in deep love, in an
orgasmic ecstasy. Khajuraho represents that. Konarak represents that. And there are
thousands of Tantra scriptures. Please destroy them before anybody comes to know
about them. Destroy Vatsyayana's KAMA SUTRA.
Why are you so afraid of me and my people? They are not doing any harm to anybody.
They are not training for any war, they are preparing for a more loving life. Yes,
alongside with Yoga, Tao, Zen, Tantra is also a part. And because a few newspapers -and they also belong to the same repressed sexual mind -- print some nude pictures
taken in the ashram... That is all they have against me.
That nudity in itself is part of a long Indian tradition. Jaina DIGAMBARA MUNIS
are nude -- prevent them, they are still nude. Thousands of Hindu sannyasins live in
nudity -- prevent them. Destroy all the temples of the Jainas, because Mahavir and the
other twenty-three TEERTHANKARAS have their nude statues there. And destroy all
the Hindu temples of Shiva, because the SHIVA-LINGA IS nothing but a phallic
symbol.
Then only can you say... First, destroy all these things, then only can you say that
Rajneesh and his ashram don't reflect the real image of India. Otherwise, India is a
vast continent thousands of years have passed and many traditions have lived together.
Tantra has existed side by side with Yoga.
Yoga is repressive, Tantra is expressive. Yoga is afraid of sex, Tantra rejoices in sex.
Yoga says, 'Avoid sex if you want to go to God,' and Tantra says, 'Use sex if you want
to go to God.' And my own observation is that Tantra is far more profound than Yoga,
because sex is the energy given to you by God; repressing it will be very disrespectful
to God. Use it. And it is the creative energy in you: it creates the child, it brings new
life. It has some other aspects also, hidden aspects. If you use it meditatively, if you
use it as prayer, it call create you anew, it can give you a rebirth. You will become a
DWIJA, a twice-born.
Sex energy has two poles to it. One is: if it moves downwards, it reproduces children.
A tremendous miracle, the birth of a child. If it moves upwards, it creates you: a new
integrity, a new individuation, a new centre of being is born. Tantra is one of the
greatest sciences ever born for the transformation of man. And this place is not an
ordinary ashram, dull, dead, as Indians have become accustomed to ashrams, this
place is an alchemical academy. We are doing great experiments in expanding human
consciousness, and we are using all kinds of techniques available to humanity, both
Eastern and Western. They are very much afraid of this.
He says, 'The Rajneesh film won't reflect the real image of India... it is felt that a film
on the activities of the ashram would not reflect favourably on India's image abroad.'
But just by preventing the BBC, the Spanish TV unit, the Australian TV unit, the
German TV unit, and journalists from reaching here, do you think you will be able to
prevent me from reaching people? If Jesus could reach without the BBC, do you think
you will be able to prevent me from reaching people? If Buddha could reach without
any modern media available to him, do you think you will be able to prevent me?
It cannot be prevented.
Truth can never be prevented. If there is some truth in me, it has to reach people. It
will reach, and people will reach me. No government can prevent me from reaching
people. Yes, you can prevent newspapers, you can prevent television stations, you can
prevent radio. Who cares?
I will reach through my people to millions of people. If there is truth, people will
come from all over the world, seeking and searching. If they are thirsty, they are
bound to seek and search, because I have something here which can quench their
thirst.
And without ever coming here... Advani has never come here, no other minister has
ever come here. Saying such silly things without coming here is not right.
And, sir, I would suggest to you... Your government is very skillful in creating
commissions. That's an that you have done within this year and a half that you have
been in power. All that you have done is to create commissions. Why don't you create
a commission to visit the ashram to see what is happening here? Just remember one
thing: be careful, because people who come here get caught. And be careful also
whom you send. All the information that you have about the ashram you depend on
getting from your police departments. How can they understand? What can they
understand? All the information that you have you depend on getting from your
government machinery. What can they understand?
So don't appoint a commission with some senile, retired judge. That won't help.
Remember that what is happening here is something so scientific that only people
who know something about modern developments in humanistic psychology, who
know something about encounter therapy, gestalt, psychodrama, primal therapy, who
know something about psychoanalysis, psychosynthesis, who know something about
EST, Arica, who know something about Vipassana, Zazen, Sufi whirling -- only they
will be able to understand what is happening here.
This place has great intellect, great intelligence, great talent. We have hundreds of
D.Litt.s, Ph.D.s, D.Phil.s, and thousands who have M.A.s, M.Sc.s and other
qualifications. No other Indian university can claim as much talent as we have here.
Even Ph.D.s are cleaning toilets!
So send some educated people, not your M.P.s -- they won't understand a thing -- and
then decide. You are also invited, Mr. Advani.
And what kind of democracy is this? You came to power in the name of democracy.
Even Indira did not dare to interfere with my work. And you are democrats...?
Nothing but Hindu chauvinists!
India is a vast continent. Do you think Charvarka and his materialism is not India? Do
you think Buddha, who denies God, who denies the soul, who denies the world, who
is a nihilist -- an utter nihilist, a nihilist PAR EXCELLENCE -- was he not a Hindu?
Do you think Tilopa and Saraha were not Indians? Great tantrikas.
Who do you think is Indian? Just Mahatma Gandhi and Mahatma Morarji Desai -these two persons are Indian? Then you don't even know much about Mahatma
Gandhi.
The whole of his life he repressed sex, and he found in his old age that he had been on
a wrong path. And then he started -- he had to start -- Tantra experiments. What about
that? In his last years of life he was sleeping with a naked young girl. His whole life
of repression had failed because even when he was seventy he was suffering from wet
dreams and sexual fantasies. Then, as an ultimate resort, as an ultimate shelter, he
started looking into Tantra. He died a tantrika. What about that? And you call him the
Father of the Nation? Stop calling him Father of the Nation; he does not represent the
real image of India. What do you think about him -- at the age of seventy, sleeping
with a young girl, an eighteen-year-old girl, naked? And you call him Father of the
Nation...
And one thing more. These are the people, Advani and company, who created the
climate in which this man, Mahatma Gandhi, was murdered -- these Hindu
chauvinists. But what kind of hypocrisy is this? Now they pay tribute and call him
Father of the Nation. And these are the murderers; they created the climate in the
country to murder that man. And now they worship him. In his name now they are in
power.
India has many currents. And it is beautiful. It is not a monolith, that's why it is
beautiful. It is a rainbow, it has all the colours: Buddhists have an ideology, Jainas
have a totally different ideology, and Hindus have many ideologies. Hinduism is not a
narrow religion. In Hinduism there is nothing like a Pope or a church; it is not an
organized religion at all. And that is the beauty of it; it allows all kinds of people to
have all kinds of ways. It says: All ways lead to God. It is the most tolerant religion in
the world.
But the Hindu chauvinist cannot tolerate it. He starts trying to make Hinduism also as
narrow as he is narrow. These are the ideas in their minds. These ideas are creating
trouble for them.
All kinds of people come to me. You will find scientists here, you will find
psychologists here -- in hundreds. You will find psychotherapists here, you will find
poets, painters, artists, musicians, actors. You will find all kinds of talented people
here -- except politicians.
Why is the politician so afraid to come here? There is a reason. The politician is the
least religious person in the world, the most anti-religious person in the world. Politics
and religion are polar opposites. Politics is ambition, religion is non-ambition. Politics
is an ego trip, religion is the dissolution of the ego. Politics is struggle, a cut-throat
competition; it is basically, essentially violent. Religion is love -- no competition, no
comparison. Hence you will not find politicians here.
And because I call a spade a spade, they are afraid of me. They can't come face to face
with me. Mr. Advani, I invite you and your colleagues to come here and encounter me,
encounter my people. It will give you some insight into what is happening here.
It is one of the greatest experiments ever done: how to expand human consciousness
without drugs. And, let me tell you, politics is a drug. Politicians are alcoholics.
Politics is a kind of neurosis. You can go to the parliament and sitting there for one
day just watch and you will see: you will not see such madness even in a madhouse.
And these people are going to decide who represents India?
India is vast, let me say it again. Nobody can represent the whole of India -- nobody
has that authority to represent the whole of India. It is not a tiny, small place; not one
tradition, not one religion, not one language either. And these Hindu chauvinists are
trying to force one language on the country. Behind Hindi there is nothing but Hindu
chauvinism. They are trying to force one language, Hindi, on the whole country -which is nonsense; it cannot be done, it should not be done. And remember, my own
mother tongue is Hindi, and I love it; it is a beautiful language. But that is another
matter. This country has many beautiful languages. No language should be forced on
the country, that will be violent, undemocratic. But that's what they are trying to do -directly, indirectly. And let me warn the country: if these people persist in trying to
force Hindi on the whole of the country, that will be the reason one day or other that
India becomes split. South India is bound to go on its own way against the North,
because the North is becoming too Hindu chauvinistic.
If this country is going to be destroyed one day, the reason will be these people who
are in power today. India cannot have one language. And if it can have one language,
that language has to be neutral; either it will be English or Esperanto, but not Hindi,
not Gujarati, not Marathi, not Bengali, not Tamil. It will have to be a neutral language.
English is neutral; it is nobody's mother tongue in India. And English is international
too, so it is perfectly good. I support a two-language formula: English as the national
language, because it is also international and as the second language, the mother
tongue. Each child should be taught two languages. Forget all about Hindi, and forget
all about creating one monolith in this country of variety, of multiplicity.
And they are trying to do the same thing with religion too, in the same way. They
want to force me not to do what I am doing here because my approach is non-political.
I have no vested interest in anything -- in any language, in any province, in any
religion, in any tradition. My approach is that the whole past is ours -- and not only
the Indian past, the whole past of humanity is ours. That's why I have chosen to speak
on Chinese Masters, Japanese Masters, Greek Masters, Hebrew Masters. I am going
to speak on all the Masters of the world, so that, listening to all these different songs,
you can become universal.
They are afraid of all this. They would like me only to talk on the Bhagavad Gita. The
Bhagavad Gita is beautiful, and I have talked on it, but I am not going to talk ONLY
on this. I don't belong to any tradition, to any past. I claim the whole past as mine, and
the whole future too.
It happens sometimes that a politician wants to come, but then he sends 'feelers', he
sends people. And those people come and they want me to invite the politician. Why
should I invite? All the people come here. Whosoever wants to come here can come
here. We are not here to pay special respect to anybody, and to politicians, certainly
not. They send messages to me that 'X is ready to come to inaugurate the ashram,' that
'Y is ready to lay the foundation for the new commune.'
I will not allow any politician to lay the foundation of my commune; it will be
sacrilegious. I will not allow any politician to come and inaugurate my ashram.
Politicians -- what have they to do with religion? What do they know about religion?
They have the dirtiest vibe possible.
BUt there were good days also in the past, and great people also. Listen to this
anecdote.
The Emperor came to visit the Zen Master Joshu, who was meditating in his room.
'Tell him to come in and make his bows,' the Master said to his horrified attendant.
The Emperor entered and made his obeisance.
When Joshu was later asked about his rude behaviour, he explained, 'You just don't
understand. If a visitor of low class comes, I go to the temple gate to greet him. For a
middle class guest I get up from my seat. A great emperor cannot be treated like that.'
The Emperor, of course, had been delighted with his reception.
But those were great days. An emperor was delighted... But these poor politicians,
they send messages that they should be received at the gate, garlanded; they should be
treated as VIP's. What nonsense! If I even allow you entry, that is enough respect for
you. If Sant does not prevent you at the gate, you should feel fortunate enough.
In the new commune, I am going to put a board on the gate: Politicians and dogs are
not allowed.
The Secret of Secrets, Vol 1
Chapter #11
Chapter title: The Whole and Holy Circle
21 August 1978 am in Buddha Hall
Archive code:
7808210
ShortTitle:
SOS111
Audio: Yes
Video:
No
Length: 107 mins
MASTER LU-TSU SAID: NOTHING IS POSSIBLE WITHOUT
CONTEMPLATION. PERCEIVING BRINGS ONE TO THE GOAL.
WHAT HAS TO BE REVERSED BY REFLECTION IS THE SELF-CONSCIOUS
HEART, WHICH HAS TO DIRECT ITSELF TOWARDS THAT POINT WHERE
THE FORMATIVE SPIRIT IS NOT YET MANIFEST. WITHIN OUR SIX-FOOT
BODY WE MUST STRIVE FOR THE FORM WHICH EXISTED BEFORE THE
LAYING DOWN OF HEAVEN AND EARTH. IF TODAY PEOPLE SIT AND
MEDITATE ONLY ONE OR TWO HOURS, LOOKING ONLY AT THEIR OWN
EGOS, AND CALL THIS REFLECTION, HOW CAN ANYTHING COME OF IT?
ONE SHOULD LOOK AT THE TIP OF ONE'S NOSE. BUT THIS DOES NOT
MEAN THAT ONE SHOULD FASTEN ONE'S THOUGHTS TO THE TIP OF THE
NOSE. NEITHER THAT, WHILE THE EYES ARE LOOKING AT THE TIP OF
THE NOSE, THE THOUGHTS SHOULD BE CONCENTRATED ON THE
YELLOW MIDDLE. WHEREVER THE EYE LOOKS, THE HEART IS DIRECTED
ALSO. HOW CAN IT BE DIRECTED AT THE SAME TIME UPWARD AND
DOWNWARD? ALL THAT MEANS CONFUSING THE FINGER WITH WHICH
ONE POINTS TO THE MOON WITH THE MOON ITSELF.
WHAT THEN IS REALLY MEANT BY THIS? THE EXPRESSION 'TIP OF THE
NOSE' IS CLEVERLY CHOSEN. THE NOSE MUST SERVE THE EYES AS A
GUIDE-LINE. IF ONE IS NOT GUIDED BY THE NOSE, EITHER ONE OPENS
WIDE THE EYES AND LOOKS INTO THE DISTANCE, SO THAT THE NOSE IS
NOT SEEN, OR THE LIDS SHUT TOO MUCH, SO THAT THE EYES CLOSE,
AND AGAIN THE NOSE IS NOT SEEN. BUT WHEN THE EYES ARE OPENED
TOO WIDE, ONE MAKES THE MISTAKE OF DIRECTING THEM OUTWARD,
WHEREBY ONE IS EASILY DISTRACTED. IF THEY ARE CLOSED TOO MUCH,
ONE MAKES THE MISTAKE OF LETTING THEM TURN INWARD, WHEREBY
ONE EASILY SINKS INTO A DREAMY REVERIE. ONLY WHEN THE EYELIDS
ARE LOWERED PROPERLY HALFWAY IS THE TIP OF THE NOSE SEEN IN
JUST THE RIGHT WAY. THEREFORE IT IS TAKEN AS A GUIDE-LINE. THE
MAIN THING IS TO LOWER THE EYELIDS IN THE RIGHT WAY, AND THEN
TO ALLOW THE LIGHT TO STREAM IN OF ITSELF; WITHOUT EFFORT,
WANTING THE LIGHT TO STREAM IN CONCENTRATEDLY. LOOKING AT
THE TIP OF THE NOSE SERVES ONLY AS THE BEGINNING OF THE INNER
CONCENTRATION, SO THAT THE EYES ARE BROUGHT INTO THE RIGHT
DIRECTION FOR LOOKING, AND THEN ARE HELD TO THE GUIDE-LINE:
AFTER THAT, ONE CAN LET IT BE. THIS IS THE WAY A MASON HANGS UP
A PLUMB-LINE. AS SOON AS HE HAS HUNG IT UP, HE GUIDES HIS WORK
BY IT WITHOUT CONTINUALLY BOTHERING HIMSELF TO LOOK AT THE
PLUMB-LINE.
ONE LOOKS WITH BOTH EYES AT THE TIP OF THE NOSE, SITS UPRIGHT
AND IN A COMFORTABLE POSITION, AND HOLDS THE HEART TO THE
CENTRE IN THE MIDST OF CONDITIONS. IT DOES NOT NECESSARILY
MEAN THE MIDDLE OF THE HEAD. IT IS ONLY A MATTER OF FIXING
ONE'S THINKING ON THE POINT WHICH LIES EXACTLY BETWEEN THE
TWO EYES. THEN ALL IS WELL. THE LIGHT IS SOMETHING EXTREMELY
MOBILE. WHEN ONE FIXES THE THOUGHT ON THE MID-POINT BETWEEN
THE TWO EYES, THE LIGHT STREAMS IN OF ITS OWN ACCORD. IT IS NOT
NECESSARY TO DIRECT THE ATTENTION ESPECIALLY TO THE CENTRAL
CASTLE. IN THESE FEW WORDS THE MOST IMPORTANT THING IS
CONTAINED.
'THE CENTRE IN THE MIDST OF CONDITIONS' IS A VERY SUBTLE
EXPRESSION. THE CENTRE IS OMNIPRESENT; EVERYTHING IS
CONTAINED IN IT; IT IS CONNECTED WITH THE RELEASE OF THE WHOLE
PROCESS OF CREATION.
FIXATING CONTEMPLATION IS INDISPENSABLE; IT ENSURES THE
MAKING FAST OF THE ENLIGHTENMENT. ONLY ONE MUST NOT STAY
SITTING RIGIDLY IF WORLDLY THOUGHTS COME UP, BUT ONE MUST
EXAMINE WHERE THE THOUGHT IS, WHERE IT BEGAN, AND WHERE IT
FADES OUT. NOTHING IS GAINED BY PUSHING REFLECTION FURTHER.
ONE MUST BE CONTENT TO SEE WHERE THE THOUGHT AROSE, AND NOT
SEEK BEYOND THE POINT OF ORIGIN; FOR TO FIND THE HEART
(CONSCIOUSNESS, TO GET BEHIND CONSCIOUSNESS WITH
CONSCIOUSNESS), THAT CANNOT BE DONE. TOGETHER WE WANT TO
BRING THE STATES OF THE HEART TO REST, THAT IS TRUE
CONTEMPLATION. WHAT CONTRADICTS IT IS FALSE CONTEMPLATION.
THAT LEADS TO NO GOAL. WHEN THE FLIGHT OF THE THOUGHTS KEEPS
EXTENDING FURTHER, ONE SHOULD STOP AND BEGIN CONTEMPLATING.
LET ONE CONTEMPLATE AND THEN START FIXATING AGAIN. THAT IS
THE DOUBLE METHOD OF MAKING FAST THE ENLIGHTENMENT. IT
MEANS THE CIRCULATION OF THE LIGHT. THE CIRCULATION IS
FIXATION. THE LIGHT IS CONTEMPLATION FIXATION WITHOUT
CONTEMPLATION IS CIRCULATION WITHOUT LIGHT CONTEMPLATION
WITHOUT FIXATION IS LIGHT WITHOUT CIRCULATION! TAKE NOTE OF
THAT!
A BLIND MAN visited his friends. It was dark when he left, and they gave him a
lantern.
'Thank you, but I don't need it. Light or dark, it is all the same to me.'
'Yes, but carry it anyway so people won't bump into you.'
Off he went, and soon someone collided with him and shouted, 'Why don't you look
where you're going?'
'Why, don't you see my lantern?'
'Sorry, brother,' said the other, 'your candle went out.'
The scriptures in the hands of people who don't know what meditation is are just like
a lantern in the hands of a blind man -- utterly useless. And the blind man cannot
know whether the lantern is still lit or not. He will simply be carrying an unnecessary
weight. In fact, not helpful at all -- on the contrary, it can be a hindrance. If the blind
man had been moving without the lantern he would have been more careful, more
cautious. Because of the lantern in his hand, he must have been walking as if he had
eyes, he must have put all caution aside.
That's what has happened to humanity at large. People have the Bible, the Koran, the
Gita -- these are lamps of immense beauty and light, but your eyes are blind. And the
Gita is five thousand years old -- the light went out long long ago. When Krishna died
the light went out. So is the case with the Bible and the Koran and all the other holy
scriptures of the world. When the Master dies, the light goes out.
But people go on carrying the scriptures, believing the scriptures, hoping that their life
will remain full of light because they are carrying a message from a great Master. That
message is nothing more than words; it is an unnecessary burden. If all the scriptures
of the world disappear, man may become more cautious, may become more alert, may
start looking for the source of light on his own. Because there will be nothing to lean
on, he will have to learn to stand on his own feet.
Lung-t'an was once visited by Te-shan, who, seeking further and further elucidation,
remained until it grew late. Lung-t'an finally said, 'The night deepens. Why don't you
retire?'
Te-shan, taking his leave, raised the bamboo blind and went out. Seeing the intense
darkness without, he returned and said, 'It is dark outside.'
Lung-t'an then lit a lantern and offered it to Te-shan. Just as Te-shan was about to take
it, Lung-t'an abruptly blew it out. With this, Te-shan suddenly attained awakening,
whereupon he bowed.
Lung-t'an said, 'What kind of truth did you see?'
Te-shan said, 'Never after today shall I doubt the utterances of all the old Masters
under heaven.'
The next day Lung-t'an went before the disciples and said, 'Within this group there is
a man whose canine teeth are like sword trees, whose mouth resembles a bloody plate,
and who won't turn his head even when given a blow with a stick. One day he will
establish my Way on the top of a solitary mountain peak.'
Te-shan then took out his sutra commentaries and, in front of the meditation hall,
raised a torch and said, 'Endless deep analysis is like placing a single hair in the
emptiness of space; worldly power is like throwing one drop of water into an
immense gorge.'
So saying, he took his commentaries and burned them.
Now, if you don't have eyes even light is useless. A lantern in your hands is nothing,
utterly nothing. But if you have eyes, even blowing out a candle can become an
experience of enlightenment. The question is of eyes.
This man Lung-t'an was visited by Te-shan. Lung-t'an is the Master, Te-shan is his
disciple. Seeing the darkness outside, the disciple said to the Master, 'It is too dark.'
The Master lit a candle and gave it to the disciple; and as he was going to take it, he
blew it out. Suddenly, all became dark again, more dark than it was before. And this
abrupt blowing-out of the candle must have been a shock -- unexpected. For a
moment the disciple must have fallen into the interval between two thoughts. For a
moment thinking disappeared and there was contemplation. For a moment there was
utter silence. In that silence he could see the point.
The next day he burned all his scriptures. Now they were no longer needed; now he
knew the truth through his own experience.
A little bit of experience is more valuable than mountains of knowledge. Just two
small eyes are more valuable than the sun and the moon and all the stars. The whole
point is that religion is an experience. It is not speculation, it is not continuous
analysis, it is insight.
Now the sutras.
These sutras are of immense value because they give you the technique in the simplest
terms possible. And the method is really simple -- unless you are determined to make
it complex.
The mind always turns simple things into complexities. Beware of that, because the
mind cannot exist with the simple; it is not needed. If things are really simple, what is
the need of the mind? The mind is needed only when things are complex. Then you
have to depend on the mind because then the mind will find the way out of the riddle.
But if there is no riddle, the mind is utterly useless; you can discard it. So the
investment of the mind is in complexity.
Remember it -- these sutras are very simple. Truth is always simple, utterly simple.
Master Lu-tsu said: NOTHING IS POSSIBLE WITHOUT CONTEMPLATION.
What is contemplation? A moment of no-thought.
The English word 'contemplation' does not give the right idea of DHYANA. In
English there is no word which can translate the word DHYANA.
There are three words available. One is 'concentration', which is very far-off, because
concentration means effort, tension; a forced state, not a flowing spontaneous state.
And DHYANA is a flowing spontaneity. There is no strain in it, so the word
'concentration' cannot be its translation.
Then the other word is 'contemplation'. But in English, contemplation gives the idea
of thinking. When you say somebody is contemplating, you mean thinking about
something.
Or the third word is 'meditation', but that too means thinking: to meditate upon
something. Of these three words no word carries the meaning of DHYANA.
DHYANA means a state of no-thought, a state of silence, a state of being conscious,
but without any content. The mirror is there but reflecting nothing, nothing
whatsoever. Just like the mirror, the consciousness is there, but nothing is occupying it.
That unoccupied awareness IS DHYANA.
Taoists use the word 'contemplation' to translate it. It is only because some word has
to be used. So remember the meaning -- it is not the meaning in the dictionaries. If
you look into the dictionaries you will have a totally false idea of contemplation. In
fact that is what THE SECRET OF THE GOLDEN FLOWER calls 'false
contemplation'. False contemplation means thinking about something. It may be God
-- that's what Christians mean by contemplation -- thinking about God, thinking about
holy things, transcendental things. But things are things; whether they are holy or
unholy makes no difference. And thinking is thinking; whether you think about sex or
samadhi makes no difference.
A state of no-thought, an interval... And it is always happening, but you are not alert
about it; otherwise there is no problem in it. One thought comes, then another comes,
and between these two thoughts there is always a small gap. And that gap is the door
to the divine, that gap is contemplation. If you look into that gap deeply, it starts
becoming bigger and bigger.
The mind is like a road full of traffic; one car passes by, then another car passes by,
and you become so concerned with the cars that you don't see the gap that is always
there between two cars. Otherwise they would collide. They don't collide; something
is there between them that keeps them separate. Your thoughts don't collide, they don't
run over each other, into each other. They don't even overlap in any way. Each thought
has its own boundary, each thought is definable, but the procession of thoughts is so
fast, so speedy, that you cannot see the gap unless you are really waiting for it,
searching for it.
Contemplation means changing the gestalt. Ordinarily we look at thoughts: one
thought, another thought, another thought. When you change the gestalt you look at
one interval, another interval, another interval. Your emphasis is no longer on the
thoughts but on the interval.
For example, you are sitting here. I can look at you in two ways: either one person,
another person, another person -- my emphasis is on persons, I can count how many
people there are -- or I can forget about the persons and I can count the gaps between
the persons, how many gaps are there. This is the change of gestalt. If you count the
gaps you will be surprised: persons become vague, you don't see them clearly because
you are looking into the gaps, you are counting the gaps.
Standing by the side of the road some day, just count how many gaps pass by and you
will be surprised: you don't see the colour of the cars, you don't see the make of the
cars, you don't see the drivers and the passengers in the cars, but you do see gaps -one gap gone, another gap gone. You go on counting the gaps. Your gestalt is
different.
Contemplation is the change of gestalt; not jumping from one thought to another
thought, but jumping from one gap to another gap. Slowly slowly you become very
very aware of the gaps. And that is one of the greatest secrets of life, because it is
through those gaps that you will fall into your own being, into your own centre.
Master Lu-tsu said: NOTHING IS POSSIBLE WITHOUT CONTEMPLATION.
PERCEIVING BRINGS ONE TO THE GOAL.
Perceiving, just perceiving... what in India we call DARSHAN. Seeing brings one to
the goal, not going anywhere. You need not go anywhere, just SEE. Once you start
looking into the intervals, into the gaps, you will be able to see who you are. And you
are the goal, you are both the source and the goal, the beginning and the end, the alpha
and the omega. You contain all that you have ever longed for, you have all that you
have ever desired. You need not be a beggar. If you choose to look into the gaps you
will be an emperor, if you continue to look into the thoughts you will remain a beggar.
PERCEIVING BRINGS ONE TO THE GOAL.
Not even a single step has to be taken beyond yourself because God is already within
you, God is already the case. It is your innermost core. God is not there above,
somewhere in the sky; God is within you, somewhere where thoughts no more disturb
you, where silence prevails, where utter unoccupied consciousness is present,
reflecting nothing.
Then you experience your own taste for the first time, then you are full of the
fragrance of your own being. The Golden Flower blooms.
WHAT HAS TO BE REVERSED BY REFLECTION IS THE SELF-CONSCIOUS
HEART, WHICH HAS TO DIRECT ITSELF TOWARDS THAT POINT WHERE
THE FORMATIVE SPIRIT IS NOT YET MANIFEST.
The thought is the manifest; the no-thought is the unmanifest. If your gestalt consists
only of thoughts you will not know anything more than the ego. The ego is called 'the
self-conscious heart'. You remain nothing but a bundle of thoughts. That bundle of
thoughts gives you a consciousness of the self, 'I am'.
Descartes, the father of modern Western philosophy, says, 'I think, therefore I am.' His
own meaning is very different because he is not a meditator, but the statement is
beautiful; in a totally different context it is beautiful. I give it a different meaning. Yes,
I am only if I think. If thinking disappears, the I also disappears. 'I think, therefore I
am.' This I-amness, this self-conscious heart is nothing but a continuum of thoughts. It
is not really an entity, it is a false entity, an illusion. It is just like taking a torch in
your hand and if you start revolving the torch in your hand you will see a fire circle
which is not there. But the torch is moving so fast that it creates an illusory circle of
fire, it creates the illusion of a fire circle. It is not there. Thoughts are moving so fast
that they create the idea of I.
Lu-tsu says one has to move from the self-conscious heart to the unself-conscious
heart. One has to move from ego to egolessness, one has to move from self to no-self.
The self is the manifest part -- tiny, very small, gross. The unself is the unmanifest
part -- infinite, eternal. The self is a temporal phenomenon, born one day, will have to
die one day. The unself, what Buddha calls ANATTA, no-self, is part of eternity, never
born and never going to die. It abides forever.
WITHIN OUR SIX-FOOT BODY WE MUST STRIVE FOR THE FORM WHICH
EXISTED BEFORE THE LAYING DOWN OF HEAVEN AND EARTH.
And within your six-foot body you have that original quality still alive, vibrating, that
original quality that was there before heaven and earth were made. Zen people call it
'the original face' -- when nothing was born, not even earth or heaven; an was
unmanifest; when all was silence and no sound was born; when there was no form and
all was formless, all was in seed.
You have that original silence in you. Hindus call it ANAHAT NAD. Buddhists have a
special expression for it, 'the sound of one hand clapping'. It is within you, it is your
reality. To taste it is to become immortal, to taste it is to be golden. Then dust is
transformed into the divine.
The goal of all alchemy is to transform the lower metal into
IF TODAY PEOPLE SIT AND MEDITATE ONLY ONE OR TWO HOURS,
LOOKING ONLY AT THEIR OWN EGOS, AND CALL THIS REFLECTION,
HOW CAN ANYTHING COME OF IT?
One can sit in meditation and can only look at one's ego. That's what people call
contemplation: they look into their thoughts, they don't change the gestalt. All that
happens to them is that because they are ordinarily occupied with so many things,
they cannot look into their thoughts. When they sit specially for meditation they
forget the world for the moment and the thoughts become more clear-cut, they are
more alert to their thoughts.
This is the state of a philosopher, this is how philosophers have been thinking,
speculating, philosophizing. This is not true contemplation. And this will never take
you beyond the ego, beyond death, beyond time. And that is where one's goal lies.
Let me repeat: if you want to meditate you will have to change the gestalt. Just
closing your eyes and looking into the ego won't help.
The great English philosopher, David Hume, wrote, 'Hearing and reading again and
again the great maxim and the advice of all the great Masters, "Know thyself,
meditate," I also tried to meditate. But I found nothing inside except thoughts,
memories, imagination, dreams. I have found nothing else.'
He is right because he does not know what meditation is. He is a philosopher, and one
of the most talented philosophers of the world, very very logical, consistent -- but just
a philosopher, not a meditator. He must have tried if he says so, and he must have
come across many thoughts wandering around inside. And then he said, 'But I don't
see any self, I don't see any silence, I don't see any God. It is all futile.'
He missed because he was not aware that first you have to change the gestalt. You
have not to look at the thoughts, you have to look in the gaps for the gaps, you have to
search for the gaps and you have to jump into the gaps. If he had jumped into the gaps
he would have seen thoughts disappear, dreams disappear, memories disappear. All
left behind, slowly slowly it becomes a very very distant noise. And then a moment
comes... it simply disappears and you have gone beyond. You have reached the further
shore.
ONE SHOULD LOOK AT THE TIP OF ONE'S NOSE.
Now the practical point of the whole sutra -- very simple, but try to understand it
correctly, because mind wants to distort even simple things. Mind is a distorting
mechanism.
ONE SHOULD LOOK AT THE TIP OF ONE'S NOSE.
Why? -- because this helps, it brings you in line with the third eye. When both your
eyes are fixed on the tip of the nose it does many things. The basic is that your third
eye is exactly in line with the tip of the nose -- just a few inches above, but in the
same line. And once you are in the line of the third eye, the attraction of the third eye,
the pull, the magnetism, of the third eye is so great that if you have fallen in line with
it you will be pulled even against yourself. You just have to be exactly in line with it
so that the attraction, the gravitation, of the third eye starts functioning. Once you are
exactly in line with it there will be no need to make any effort. Suddenly you will find
the gestalt has changed, because the two eyes create the duality of the world and
thought, and the single eye between the two eyes creates the gaps. This is a simple
method of changing the gestalt.
ONE SHOULD LOOK AT THE TIP OF ONE'S NOSE. BUT THIS DOES NOT
MEAN THAT ONE SHOULD FASTEN ONE'S THOUGHTS TO THE TIP OF THE
NOSE.
That's how the mind can distort it. The mind can say, 'Okay, now look at the tip of the
nose. Think of the tip of the nose, concentrate on it.' If you concentrate too much on
the tip of the nose you will miss the point, because you have to be there at the tip of
the nose but very relaxed so that the third eye can pull you. If you are too
concentrated on the tip of the nose, rooted, focused, fixed there, your third eye will
not be able to pull you in, because your third eye has never functioned before. Its pull
cannot be very great in the beginning. Slowly slowly it grows more and more. Once it
starts functioning and the dust that has gathered around it disappears with use, and the
mechanism is humming well, then even if you are fixed on the tip of the nose you will
be pulled in. But not in the beginning. You have to be very very light, not a burden,
without any stress and strain. You have to be simply there, present, in a kind of let-go.
NEITHER THAT, WHILE THE EYES ARE LOOKING AT THE TIP OF THE NOSE,
THE THOUGHTS SHOULD BE CONCENTRATED ON THE YELLOW MIDDLE.
So don't concentrate on the tip of the nose or -- the second trick the mind can play...
The Master is simply trying to make you alert to all the possibilities, to all the games
that the mind is capable of. First it will say, 'Okay, so the Master says, "Concentrate
on the tip of the nose."' He is not saying, 'Concentrate on the tip of the nose,' he is
simply saying 'Look. Just a very light, effortless look.' Or the mind can say, 'Okay, if
you are just looking at the tip of the nose, then concentrate on the third eye.'
Mind is always in favour of concentration because mind feeds on concentration, lives
on concentration. Hence in your schools, colleges, universities, concentration is taught
not meditation, because they are all factories for creating the mind; they manufacture
the mind.
WHEREVER THE EYE LOOKS, THE HEART IS DIRECTED ALSO. HOW CAN
IT BE DIRECTED AT THE SAME TIME UPWARD AND DOWNWARD?
And then the mind can say, 'Look, this is impossible, the demand is illogical. How can
you look in two directions simultaneously, at the tip of the nose and at the third eye? It
is not possible, it cannot be done. Don't be foolish!'
Now the third game of the mind -- of condemning something as illogical. First it
creates a bogus idea and then it starts destroying it. And when it destroys, it has great
joy -- a very masochistic, sadistic joy. It says, 'Look, this is what he means. Absurdity!
First look at the tip of the nose and then look at the third eye -- how can you do both,
look upward and downward? It is impossible.'
ALL THAT MEANS CONFUSING THE FINGER WITH WHICH ONE POINTS TO
THE MOON WITH THE MOON ITSELF.
WHAT THEN IS REALLY MEANT BY THIS? THE EXPRESSION 'TIP OF THE
NOSE' IS CLEVERLY CHOSEN. THE NOSE MUST SERVE THE EYES AS A
GUIDE-LINE.
That's all -- just as a guide-line, so you are in the field, in the force-field, of the third
eye, so that you are very close to the magnetic energy of the third eye. It can't work in
any other way. You have just to be present to the magnetic force, in the field of it, and
then it takes you in. You need not go in, you need not make any effort to go in; it
happens of its own accord.
IF ONE IS NOT GUIDED BY THE NOSE, EITHER ONE OPENS WIDE THE
EYES AND LOOKS INTO THE DISTANCE, SO THAT THE NOSE IS NOT SEEN,
OR THE LIDS SHUT TOO MUCH, SO THAT THE EYES CLOSE, AND AGAIN
THE NOSE IS NOT SEEN. BUT WHEN THE EYES ARE OPENED TOO WIDE,
ONE MAKES THE MISTAKE OF DIRECTING THEM OUTWARD, WHEREBY
ONE IS EASILY DISTRACTED.
And another function of looking very lightly at the tip of the nose is this: that it
doesn't allow you to open your eyes wide. If you open your eyes wide the whole
world becomes available. And there are a thousand and one distractions. A beautiful
woman passes by and you start following -- at least in the mind. Or somebody is
fighting; you are not concerned, but you start thinking, 'What is going to happen?' Or
somebody is crying and you become curious. A thousand and one things are
continuously moving around you. If the eyes are wide open, you become masculine
energy, yang.
If the eyes are completely closed you fall into a kind of reverie, you start dreaming;
you become feminine energy, yin. To avoid both just look at the tip of the nose -- a
simple device, but the result is almost magical.
And this is not only so with the Taoists, Buddhists know it, Hindus know it. Down the
ages all the meditators have somehow stumbled upon the fact that if your eyes are just
half open, in a very miraculous way you escape two pitfalls. One is being distracted
by the outside world, the other is being distracted by the inside dream world. You
remain exactly on the boundary of the inner and the outer. And that's the point: to be
on the boundary of the inner and the outer means you are neither male nor female in
that moment. Your vision is free of duality; your vision has transcended the division
in you. Only when you are beyond the division in you do you fall into the line of the
magnetic field of the third eye.
IF THEY ARE CLOSED TOO MUCH, ONE MAKES THE MISTAKE OF
LETTING THEM TURN INWARD, WHEREBY ONE EASILY SINKS INTO A
DREAMY REVERIE. ONLY WHEN THE EYELIDS ARE LOWERED PROPERLY
HALFWAY IS THE TIP OF THE NOSE SEEN IN JUST THE RIGHT WAY.
THEREFORE IT IS TAKEN AS A GUIDE-LINE. THE MAIN THING IS TO
LOWER THE EYELIDS IN THE RIGHT WAY, AND THEN TO ALLOW THE
LIGHT TO STREAM IN OF ITSELF...
That is very important to remember: you are not to pull the light in, you are not to
force the light in. If the window is open, the light comes in of its own accord. If the
door is open, the light floods in. You need not bring it in, you need not push it in, you
need not drag it in. And how can you drag light in? How can you push light in? All
that is needed is that you should be open and vulnerable to it.
And that's exactly what happens when you are looking at the tip of the nose. Just
looking, without any concentration, just looking, without any heaviness in it, without
any strain in it, suddenly the window of the third eye opens and the light starts
streaming in. The light that has always been going out starts coming in too, and the
circle is complete.
And this circle makes a man perfect. And this circle makes a man utterly restful,
relaxed. This circle makes a man whole and holy. He is no more divided.
Otherwise everybody is more or less schizophrenic. Only this man who has been able
to create the circle of light -- and the circulation of the light is beyond schizophrenia -is really healthy, is really non-neurotic. Otherwise the difference between people is
not much. The neurotic and the so-called non-neurotic differ only in degree. In fact,
the patient and the psychoanalyst are not different kinds of people, they are the same
-- one neurotic trying to help another neurotic. And sometimes it happens that the one
who is helping may be more neurotic than the one he is trying to help.
More psychoanalysts go mad than any other profession in the world. More
psychoanalysts commit suicide than any other profession in the world. Why? In a way
it seems reasonable, logical. Continuously dealing with neurosis, all kinds of
madnesses -- and they themselves are not whole -- naturally, they are going to be
affected. They are feeding themselves with these neuroses. When a psychoanalyst is
listening to the patient and all his nonsense and rubbish, unconsciously he is
collecting it in himself. The patient is dumping all his nonsense on the psychoanalyst.
In fact, he pays for that. Slowly slowly the psychoanalyst has so much neurosis
dumped in him that it is going to explode. It is natural.
If I were to decide about who should be the psychoanalyst then this process of making
light circulate would be the basic requirement, the fundamental requirement for a
psychoanalyst. Unless a person were capable of circulating his light he would not be
allowed to treat anybody. And if a person is capable of circulating the light in himself
he will never be affected by any kind of neurosis. He can listen, he can help -- he will
remain untouched. His circulation of light will keep him clean, purified. He will be a
holy person.
That is the difference between a guru and a psychoanalyst: only a guru can really be a
psychoanalyst, only a guru can really be a therapist. Only a person who has come to
his wholeness can be of real help to others who are on the way, struggling, stumbling
in the dark. Otherwise the blind man is leading another blind man -- both are going to
fall in some well.
This book, THE SECRET OF THE GOLDEN FLOWER, must become the most
fundamental practice in the future for anybody who wants to become a
psychotherapist. You will be surprised: the man, Wilhelm, who translated this book
into a Western language for the first time, was himself a great psychologist; that's how
he became interested in this book. But after he translated it he went mad, he became
very disturbed. His whole psychoanalytic training and this book created such a
contradiction in him, created such a riddle in him, that he became more divided. The
translation of this book drowned him in a kind of madness. He became so disoriented
because his whole training, his whole understanding, was disturbed.
Remember it, the secret is not very difficult. That is the difficulty of it -- it is so
simple that you only have to be on guard so that your mind does not make it difficult,
does not give it twists and turns and contortions and distortions.
THEREFORE IT IS TAKEN AS A GUIDE-LINE. THE MAIN THING IS TO
LOWER THE EYELIDS IN THE RIGHT WAY, AND THEN TO ALLOW THE
LIGHT TO STREAM IN OF ITSELF; WITHOUT EFFORT, WANTING THE
LIGHT TO STREAM IN CONCENTRATEDLY.
There is no need to bring the light in concentratedly; it comes of its own accord. And
when it comes of its own accord it is beautiful. If you start trying to bring it in you
will be a failure, your effort is doomed to fail. And the more you fail the harder you
will try, and the more you try the more your failure will be guaranteed.
Don't try to bring it in, just leave yourself in the right situation where it becomes
available.
For example, if the moon is there in the night, just come to the window and stand at
the window, and the moon starts showering its nectar on you. You need not do
anything else, just be in a place where the moon is already streaming. Just make
yourself available in the right field and things start happening -- things which have
immense value.
LOOKING AT THE TIP OF THE NOSE SERVES ONLY AS THE BEGINNING OF
THE INNER CONCENTRATION, SO THAT THE EYES ARE BROUGHT INTO
THE RIGHT DIRECTION FOR LOOKING, AND THEN ARE HELD TO THE
GUIDE-LINE: AFTER THAT, ONE CAN LET IT BE. THIS IS THE WAY A
MASON HANGS UP A PLUMB-LINE. AS SOON AS HE HAS HUNG IT UP, HE
GUIDES HIS WORK BY IT WITHOUT CONTINUALLY BOTHERING HIMSELF
TO LOOK AT THE PLUMB-LINE.
ONE LOOKS WITH BOTH EYES AT THE TIP OF THE NOSE...
Remember, you have to look with both eyes at the tip of the nose so that at the tip of
the nose your two eyes lose their duality. So, on the tip of the nose the light that is
streaming out from your eyes becomes one; it falls on a single point. Where your two
eyes meet, that is the place where the window opens. And then all is well. Then let it
be, then simply enjoy, then simply celebrate, delight, rejoice. Then nothing has to be
done.
ONE LOOKS WITH BOTH EYES AT THE TIP OF THE NOSE, SITS UPRIGHT...
It is helpful to sit upright. When your spine is straight, the energy from your sex
centre also becomes available to the third eye. Just simple devices, nothing complex
about them... it is just that when your two eyes meet at the tip of the nose, you are
available to the third eye. Make your sex energy also available to the third eye. Then
the effect will be double, the effect will be forceful, because your sex centre has all
the energy that you have. When the spine is erect, straight, the sex centre is also
available to the third eye. It is better to attack the third eye from both dimensions, to
try to penetrate the third eye from both directions.
ONE... SITS UPRIGHT AND IN A COMFORTABLE POSITION...
The Master is making things very clear. Upright, certainly, but don't make it
uncomfortable; otherwise again you will be distracted by your discomfort. That is the
meaning of a yoga posture. The Sanskrit word ASANA means a comfortable posture.
Comfort is the basic quality of it. If it is not comfortable then your mind will be
distracted by the discomfort. It has to be comfortable.
If you cannot sit on the floor like Eastern people can -- because they have been sitting
for centuries... If a Western seeker cannot sit on the floor straight, comfortably, and he
has to force himself, and it becomes uncomfortable and painful, then it is better to sit
straight on a chair. But let the back of the chair be straight. You must have seen
pictures and statues of ancient Egyptian kings and queens. Their chairs have very
straight backs. Then sit like that. That also is a yoga posture. Those ancient Egyptians
knew the secrets.
Anyway, two things: your spine should be straight and your posture should be
comfortable. If both are not possible... sometimes it is so, both are not possible. If you
make your spine straight it becomes uncomfortable, if you become comfortable the
spine is no longer straight -- then choose comfort. It will not be as good but the next
best thing is to choose comfort. Then forget about the spine and its straightness,
because if the mind is distracted, nothing is going to happen. If it is possible to have
both then it is very beautiful.
Sit IN A COMFORTABLE POSITION. One sits upright and in a comfortable position,
AND HOLDS THE HEART TO THE CENTRE IN THE MIDST OF CONDITIONS.
And don't escape from the world. Live in the world, in the conditions of it. The noise
of the traffic is there, and the aeroplane passes by, and the trains are shuttling. All
kinds of things are there, all these situations -- the world. But sit silently IN the world,
because escaping to a Himalayan cave is always dangerous -- dangerous for the single
reason that the silence of the Himalayas is contagious and you will feel that you have
become silent. And the coolness of the air is contagious and you will think that you
have cooled down. It will be borrowed, and whenever you come back to the
market-place all will be gone. And then you will know that all those years in the
Himalayas were a wastage, a sheer wastage; you were simply befooling yourself.
It is better to be in the world and attain to centring, because then it cannot be taken
away from you. So wherever you are, you have to become centred in those conditions.
IT DOES NOT NECESSARILY MEAN THE MIDDLE OF THE HEAD.
And by centring it is not meant that you have to be centred in the middle of the head.
IT IS ONLY A MATTER OF FIXING ONE'S THINKING ON THE POINT WHICH
LIES EXACTLY BETWEEN THE TWO EYES.
And remember, not concentrating but just remaining alert, just a slight alertness. Look
at the tip of the nose and remain slightly alert to the third eye. In fact, the moment you
look at the tip of the nose you will become alert to the third eye, because that is the
other pole of the nose. One pole, the outer pole, is the tip, the end; the other end of the
nose is joined with the third eye. The moment you become aware of the tip you will
suddenly become aware of the other end too. But just remain aware, effortlessly
aware.
IT IS ONLY A MATTER OF FIXING ONE'S THINKING ON THE POINT WHICH
LIES EXACTLY BETWEEN THE TWO EYES. THEN ALL IS WELL.
A tremendous statement: THEN ALL IS WELL. You have started arriving home. You
are on the threshold of a revolution.
THE LIGHT IS SOMETHING EXTREMELY MOBILE.
Light is always moving, light is movement. And light is the greatest movement in the
world. The speed of light is one hundred-and eighty-six thousand miles in a single
second. Nothing moves at a greater speed than light. Light is pure speed; it is another
name for speed. Light is never dormant, it is always dynamic, it is always moving,
always flowing.
THE LIGHT IS SOMETHING EXTREMELY MOBILE. WHEN ONE FIXES THE
THOUGHT ON THE MID-POINT BETWEEN THE TWO EYES, THE LIGHT
STREAMS IN OF ITS OWN ACCORD.
You need not be worried. Just open the window and wait. Light is such a moving
phenomenon that if the window is open it is going to move in. In &ct, it has been
knocking on the window for many many lives, but the window has not opened and it
cannot force it open.
It is just like in the morning the sun has risen, and you are fast asleep. And the rays
come on the window and they knock on the window -- but their knock is silent, they
don't make any noise -- and they wait there. The moment you wake up and you open
the window, the light streams in. And with light comes life, and with light comes
delight.
WHEN ONE FIXES THE THOUGHT ON THE MID-POINT BETWEEN THE TWO
EYES, THE LIGHT STREAMS IN OF ITS OWN ACCORD.
Remember the words OF ITS OWN ACCORD. You are not a doer, you are just in a
kind of let-go, you are surrendered to light.
IT IS NOT NECESSARY TO DIRECT THE ATTENTION ESPECIALLY TO THE
CENTRAL CASTLE. IN THESE FEW WORDS THE MOST IMPORTANT THING
IS CONTAINED.
The very secret of transforming your whole being, the very secret of the kingdom of
God, the very secret of NIRVANA...
'THE CENTRE IN THE MIDST OF CONDITIONS' IS A VERY SUBTLE
EXPRESSION. THE CENTRE IS OMNIPRESENT; EVERYTHING IS
CONTAINED IN IT; IT IS CONNECTED WITH THE RELEASE OF THE WHOLE
PROCESS OF CREATION.
And when you have reached the third-eye point and you are centred there and the
light is flooding in, you have reached the point from which the whole creation has
arisen. You have reached the formless, the unmanifest. Call it God if you will. This is
the point, this is the space, from which all has arisen. This is the very seed of the
whole existence. It is omnipotent, it is omnipresent, it is eternal.
Now you will not know any death. Now you will not know any identity with any kind
of body, young, old, beautiful, ugly. Now you will not know any kind of disease -- not
that diseases will not happen to the body, but they will not happen to you anymore
because you are no more identified.
Raman Maharshi died of cancer. The body was in great agony but he was smiling. The
doctors were puzzled, they could not believe it. It was not believable. The body was in
such agony and he was in such great ecstasy. How was it possible? And they asked
again and again, 'How is it possible?' And he would say again and again, 'There is
nothing strange about it. I am not the body. So whatsoever is happening in the body, it
is just as if you were witnessing my body. I am also witnessing my body. You are not
feeling any pain so why should I? You are a witness, I am a witness. The body is just
an object -- an object in the middle of both of us. You are seeing from the outside that
it is in agony, I am seeing from the inside that it is in agony. If you are not affected
just by seeing it, why should I be?'
In fact, the doctors were affected. They were feeling very sympathetic. They were sad.
They were feeling helpless. They would have liked to save this man -- one of the most
beautiful people that has ever walked on earth. But they could not. They were crying,
but Raman was not affected at all.
There is a transcendence point within you at which suddenly you become
disconnected from all that is manifest and you become connected with the unmanifest.
To be connected with the unmanifest is to be free -- free from all misery, all limitation,
all bondage.
FIXATING CONTEMPLATION IS INDISPENSABLE...
And this is something which you cannot avoid -- it is indispensable. If you want to
reach a state of beatitude you will have to go through this fixating, this process of
contemplation, meditation, or DHYANA.
... IT ENSURES THE MAKING FAST OF THE ENLIGHTENMENT. ONLY ONE
MUST NOT STAY SITTING RIGIDLY IF WORLDLY THOUGHTS COME up...
Now the second, very important, piece of advice from the Master.
... ONE MUST NOT STAY SITTING RIGIDLY IF WORLDLY THOUGHTS COME
UP, BUT ONE MUST EXAMINE WHERE THE THOUGHT IS, WHERE IT
BEGAN, AND WHERE IT FADES OUT.
This is not going to happen in the first try. You will be looking at the tip of the nose
and thoughts will come. They have been coming for so many lives, they cannot leave
you alone so easily. They have become part of you, they have become almost built-in.
You are living almost a programmed life.
Have you ever watched what you go on doing? Then tomorrow morning do one thing:
the moment you wake up in the morning, simply watch what you do -- how you get
out of bed, how you move, what thoughts you have in the mind... Just watch. And for
one week you watch. You will be surprised: you do exactly the same thing every
morning -- the same gestures, the same face, and almost the same kind of thoughts.
You have become a programmed phenomenon. And you have been doing this your
whole life -- and maybe for many lives, who knows?
When you become angry, watch -- it is always the same process. You move through
the same spaces. When you are happy, watch. When you fall in love, watch. And
when you fall out of love, watch. It is almost the same process. And you go on doing
the same stupid things again and again, and you go on making the same stupid
statements again and again.
You are not living a conscious life: ninety-nine percent of you is programmed -programmed by others, programmed by society, or programmed by yourself, but it is
programmed. So it is not so easy that when you sit and look at the tip of the nose for
the first time, thoughts will say, 'Now we should not go to this man. Look at the poor
fellow -- how deeply he is meditating! And he is looking at the tip of the nose... This
is not the time to go to him.' They will not bother. They will go on rushing; they will
not be prevented by your looking at the tip of the nose. In fact, they may come even
more forcibly seeing that this man is trying to get out of their grip.
This happens: when people sit silently in meditation more thoughts come than they do
ordinarily, than they usually come -- unusual explosions. Millions of thoughts rush in,
because they have some investment in you -- and you are trying to get out of their
power? They will give you a hard time. So thoughts are bound to come. What are you
going to do with thoughts? You cannot just go on sitting visibly there, you will have
to do something. Fighting is not going to help because if you start fighting you will
forget to look at the tip of the nose, the awareness of the third eye, the circulation of
the light; you will forget all and you will be lost in the jungle of thoughts. If you start
chasing thoughts you are lost, if you follow them you are lost, if you fight them you
are lost. Then what is to be done?
And this is the secret. Buddha has also used the same secret. In fact, the secrets are
almost the same because man is the same -- the lock is the same, so the key has to be
the same. This is the secret: Bud&a calls it SAMMASATI, right remembrance. Just
remember: this thought has come, see where it is, with no antagonism, with no
justification, with no condemnation. Just be objective as a scientist is objective. See
where it is, from where it is coming, where it is going. See the coming of it, see the
staying of it, see the going of it. And thoughts are very mobile; they don't stay long.
You simply have to watch the arising of the thought, the staying of the thought, and
the going of the thought. Don't try to fight, don't try to follow, just be a silent observer.
And you will be surprised: the more settled observation becomes, the less thoughts
will come. When observatiOn is perfect, thoughts disappear. There is only a gap left,
an interval left.
But remember one more point: the mind can again play a trick.
NOTHING IS GAINED BY PUSHING REFLECTION FURTHER.
But don't try to push the reflection further.
That's what Freudian psychoanalysis is: the free association of thoughts. One thought
comes, and then you wait for another thought, and then another, and the whole chain...
That's what all kinds of psychoanalysis do -- you start moving backwards into the past.
One thought is connected with another, and so on and so forth, AD infinitum. There is
no end to it. If you go into it you will be moving into an eternal journey that will be a
sheer wastage. Mind can do that. So beware of it.
NOTHING IS GAINED BY PUSHING REFLECTION FURTHER. ONE MUST BE
CONTENT TO SEE WHERE THE THOUGHT AROSE, AND NOT SEEK
BEYOND THE POINT OF ORIGIN;FOR TO FIND THE HEART
(CONSCIOUSNESS, TO GET BEHIND CONSCIOUSNESS WITH
CONSCIOUSNESS ITSELF), THAT CANNOT BE DONE.
You cannot go with consciousness beyond consciousness, so don't try the futile, the
unnecessary; otherwise one thing will lead you to another and so on and so forth, and
you will completely forget what you were trying to do there. The tip of the nose will
disappear, the third eye will be forgotten, the circulation of the light will be miles
away from you.
So only this much -- the single thought. Don't go into the chain. The single thought
arises; watch where it is, from where it is coming and, when it disappears, watch -- it
has disappeared. Take note.
Buddhists say when a thought arises, say, 'Thought, thought,' so that you become alert.
Just as when a thief comes into the house, you say, 'Thief! thief!' and everybody
becomes alert, simply say, 'Thought, thought,' and you will become alert, watchful. A
thief has entered. Now watch what the thief is doing.
The moment you become aware, the thought will stop; it will look at you and be a
little surprised because you have never done this before; it will feel a little unwelcome.
'And what has happened to this man? He has always been such a good host, and now
he says, "Thief! thief! Thought, thought." What has happened to this man?' The
thought will be puzzled; it will not be able to comprehend what is happening. 'Is this
man going mad, looking at the tip of the nose and saying "Thought, thought"?' The
very awareness will stop the movement of the thought for a time. It will be stuck
there.
And go on watching. Don't condemn, don't throw it out, don't fight, because either
condemnation or justification will make you identified with the thought. Simply be
there, alert, looking at the thought. Then it starts disappearing. Just as it came, it
disappears. It came out of imagination, it disappears into imagination. Once it
disappears, you come back to contemplation. You need not go to the very origin of it
because there is none, then you will have to go to the very origin of existence.
That's why psychoanalysis has no end; it is never finished. There is not a single
person in the world who is totally psychoanalyzed. Nobody can be totally
psychoanalyzed. One year, tWo years, three years, four, five, six, seven -- you can
find people who have been going to psychoanalysis for seven years. Then what do
you think -- do they stop because the psychoanalysis is complete? No. They are bored
with the psychoanalyst, the psychoanalyst is bored with them. And everything has to
be finished somewhere; one has to put a full point. How long can one go on?
But no psychoanalysis is ever complete -- it cannot be. It is an infinite onion; you can
go on peeling it and peeling it and peeling it, and you will never come to the end of it.
But it helps; it makes you more adjusted to yourself and to society. It does not
transform you, it makes you normally abnormal, that's all. It helps you to be adjusted
to the neurotic society in which you are. It makes you not a transformed, luminous
being, but an ordinary person who is accepting of all that life brings, good and bad,
and who starts dragging himself as everybody else is dragging. It teaches you a kind
of sad acceptance of life. It is not true acceptance either, because true acceptance
always brings celebration.
Sigmund Freud has said that man cannot be happy, at most he can be comfortable.
Life can be made more comfortable, that's all, but happiness is impossible.
It is not impossible -- it is impossible through psychoanalysis -- because there have
been happy people; we have seen them. A Buddha, a Lao Tzu, a Krishna -- we have
seen these dancing people Freud is not happy, that is true, and he cannot be happy
unless he drops psychoanalysis and moves into some meditative process; he will not
be happy. It will take a few more lives for him to learn meditation.
In fact, he was very afraid of meditation. And not just Sigmund Freud, but even a man
like Carl Gustav Jung was afraid. Carl Gustav Jung has written a commentary on this
book, THE SECRET OF THE GOLDEN FLOWER; but it is only intellectual, it has
no existential value. He had no experience of meditation himself -- how can it have
any existential value? And he was a very egoistic person; and the egoistic person finds
it very difficult to enter into meditation because you have to drop your ego at the very
door.
Jung came to India while Raman Maharshi was alive, and many people suggested to
him: 'Since you have come to India and you are so interested in the inner mysteries of
life, why don't you go to Raman? You write commentaries on THE SECRET OF THE
GOLDEN FLOWER -- and here is a Golden Flower in full bloom. Why don't you go
to Raman?' But he never went. He travelled in India, met many people, but never
went to see Raman. Why? What was the fear? Afraid to encounter this man, afraid to
face this mirror.
Have you ever looked at Jung's picture? Even in the picture the ego is so apparent.
Freud doesn't seem as egoistic as Jung. Maybe it was his ego that took him away from
his master, Sigmund Freud, that made him betray Freud. Just look at his picture. His
eyes... they are very cunning, calculating, as if ready to jump on anybody;
tremendously egoistic, but very clever, intelligent, intellectually skillful.
Remember, psychoanalysis or analytical psychology or other brands of the same game
cannot lead you to happiness, they can lead you only to a lukewarm life of adjustment.
They cannot help you to become aflame with celebration; this is beyond their capacity.
And the reason? The reason is that they go on analyzing the thought. Analysis is not
needed.
Hence THE SECRET says:
TOGETHER WE WANT TO BRING THE STATES OF THE HEART TO REST,
THAT IS TRUE CONTEMPLATION.
We want to bring the whole being to a kind of absolute rest. Analysis is not going to
help, because analysis will create a turmoil, a restlessness.
WHAT CONTRADICTS IT IS FALSE CONTEMPLATION.
Analysis is a false contemplation.
THAT LEADS TO NO GOAL. WHEN THE FLIGHT OF THE THOUGHTS KEEPS
EXTENDING FURTHER, ONE SHOULD STOP AND BEGIN CONTEMPLATING.
So these two things have to be remembered, these are two wings. One: when there is
an interval, no thought is coming, contemplate. When a thought comes then just look
at these three things: where the thought is, from where it has come, where it is going.
For a moment stop looking into the gap, look at the thought, watch the thought, say
goodbye to it. When it leaves, again immediately move back to contemplation.
Again, just as an example: if you are looking at the gaps between the cars passing on
the roads, when the car comes what will you do? You will have to watch the car too,
but you don't become concerned about the car, you don't become concerned about the
make, the vintage, the year, the colour, the driver, the passenger -- you don't become
concerned about all that analysis -- yoU simply take note of the car. The car has come,
the car is there in front of you, the car has gone. And again you become interested in
the gap. Your whole interest is in the gap. But the car comes, so for a moment you
have to pay attention to it. Then it is gone; you again start falling into rest, into
contemplation, into the interval.
WHEN THE FLIGHT OF THE THOUGHTS KEEPS EXTENDING FURTHER,
ONE SHOULD STOP AND BEGIN CONTEMPLATING. LET ONE
CONTEMPLATE AND THEN START FIXATING AGAIN.
So, whenever the thought comes, fixate. Whenever the thought goes, contemplate.
THAT IS THE DOUBLE METHOD OF MAKING FAST THE ENLIGHTENMENT.
IT MEANS THE CIRCULATION OF THE LIGHT. THE CIRCULATION IS
FIXATION. THE LIGHT IS CONTEMPLATION.
Whenever you contemplate you will see light flooding in, and whenever you fixate
you will create the circulation, you will make the circulation possible. Both are
needed.
THE LIGHT IS CONTEMPLATION. FIXATION WITHOUT CONTEMPLATION
IS CIRCULATION WITHOUT LIGHT.
That's what has happened; that calamity has happened to hatha yoga. They fixate, they
concentrate, but they have forgotten the light. They have completely forgotten about
the guest. They only go on preparing the house, they have become so engrossed in
preparing the house that they have forgotten the purpose for which they are preparing
the house, for whom. The hatha yogi continuously prepares his body, purifies his body,
does yoga postures, breathing exercises, and goes on doing it AD NAUSEAM. He has
completely forgotten what he is doing it for. And the light is standing there but he
won't allow it because the light can come in only when he is completely in a let-go.
FIXATION WITHOUT CONTEMPLATION IS CIRCULATION WITHOUT LIGHT.
This is the calamity that happens to the so-called yogis. The other kind of calamity
happens to psychoanalysts, philosophers.
CONTEMPLATION WITHOUT.FIXATION IS LIGHT WITHOUT CIRCULATION.
They think about the light, but they have not made the preparation for it to flood in;
they only THINK of light. They think of the guest, they imagine a thousand and one
things about the guest, but their house is not ready. Both miss.
The Master says:
TAKE NOTE OF THAT!
Otherwise you can also miss. Prepare and then wait. Get ready. Looking at the tip of
the nose, alert to the third eye, an erect spine, a comfortable posture -- that's all that
you have to do; more than that is not needed. There is no need to go on doing yoga
postures year in, year out; that is stupid.
And that's why you will find the so-called yogis looking so stupid, unintelligent.
Maybe their bodies are strong and they will live long, but what is the point of it?
Without light life is going to remain unintelligent and dark. Whether you live long or
short makes no difference. The real point is to live in light even for a single moment,
and then it is enough. That single moment is eternity.
And there are philosophers who go on thinking about the light -- what it is, how to
define it, and which definition is the best -- and they constantly create many theories,
dogmas, and great systems of thought, but they are not ready for it. And the light is
just waiting at the door.
TAKE NOTE OF THAT!
Don't fall into either of these two fallacies. If you can remain alert, it is a very simple
process and immensely transforming. In a single moment a man who understands
rightly can enter into a separate kind of reality.
God is not far away, God is within you.
The Secret of Secrets, Vol 1
Chapter #12
Chapter title: To Create a Balance
22 August 1978 am in Buddha Hall
Archive code:
7808220
ShortTitle:
SOS112
Audio: Yes
Video:
No
Length: 100 mins
The first question:
Question 1
IS IT FAIR TO PUT POLITICIANS WITH DOGS?
I am sorry. I apologize -- because dogs are so innocent. It is not fair at all.
The second question:
Question 2
WHAT IS NEUROSIS AND WHAT IS THE CURE FOR IT?
Neurosis has never been so epidemic in the past as it is now. It is almost becoming a
normal state of human mind. It has to be understood.
The past was spiritually more healthy, and the reason was that mind was not fed so
many things simultaneously; the mind was not overloaded. The modern mind is
overloaded, and that which remains unassimilated creates neurosis. It is as if you go
on eating and stuffing your body. That which is not digested by the body will prove to
be poisonous. And what you eat is less important than what you hear and see. From
your eyes, from your ears, from all your senses, you go on receiving a thousand and
one things each moment. And there is no extra assimilation time. It is as if one were
constantly sitting at the dining table, eating, eating, twenty-four hours a day.
This is the situation of the modern mind: it is overloaded; so many things are
burdening it. It is not any surprise that it breaks down. There is a limit to every
mechanism. And mind is one of the most subtle and delicate of mechanisms.
A really healthy person is one who takes fifty percent of his time to assimilate his
experiences. Fifty percent action, fifty percent inaction -- that is the right balance.
Fifty percent thinking, fifty percent meditation -- that is the cure.
Meditation is nothing but a time when you can relax utterly into yourself, when you
close all your doors, all your senses, to the outside stimulus. You disappear from the
world. You forget the world as if it exists no more -- no newspapers, no radio, no
television, no people. You are alone in your innermost being, relaxed, at home.
In these moments, all that has become accumulated is assimilated. That which is
worthless is thrown out. Meditation functions like a double-edged sword: on the one
hand it assimilates all that is nourishing, and it rejects and throws out all that is junk.
But meditation has disappeared from the world. In the old days, people were naturally
meditative. Life was uncomplicated, and people had enough time just to sit and do
nothing, or look at the stars, or watch the trees, or listen to the birds. People had
intervals of deep passivity. In those moments you become more and more healthy and
whole.
Neurosis means you are carrying such a load in the mind that you are dying under it.
You cannot move. There is no question of your consciousness flying. You cannot even
creep -- the burden is too much. And the burden goes on increasing every moment.
One cracks up. It is very natural.
A few things to be understood. Neurosis is the mouse endlessly trying the dead end,
not learning. Yes, not learning is neurosis -- that is the first definition. You go on
trying the dead end.
You have been angry. How many times have you been angry? And how many times
have you repented of being angry? Still, let there be a stimulus and your reaction will
again be the same. You have not learned a thing. You have been greedy and greed has
created more and more misery. You know it -- greed has never given anybody
blissfulness -- but you are still greedy, you still go on being greedy. You don't learn.
Non-learning creates neurosis, is neurosis.
Learning means assimilation. You try one thing and then you find that it doesn't work.
You drop it. You move in another direction, you try another alternative. This is wise,
this is intelligent. Just knocking your head against a wall where you know perfectly
well there is no door is neurosis.
People are getting more and more neurotic because they go on trying the dead end,
they go on trying that which doesn't work. The man who is capable of learning never
becomes neurotic -- cannot become. He immediately sees the point that this is a wall.
He drops the whole idea. He starts moving into other dimensions. There are other
alternatives available. He has learned something.
It is said of Edison that he was trying one experiment in which he failed seven
hundred times. His colleagues became desperate. Three years were wasted and he
went on trying new alternatives again and again. And every morning he came with
great enthusiasm -- the same enthusiasm that he had come with on the first day. And
three years were wasted.
One day his colleagues gathered together and they said to him, 'We don't see the point.
We have failed seven hundred times. It is time to drop the experimentation.' Edison is
reported to have said, 'What are you saying -- failed? We have learned that seven
hundred alternatives were wrong alternatives. It has been a great experience! Today I
am not going to try the same experiment, I have found another one. We are coming
closer to the truth. How many false alternatives can there be? There must be a limit. If
there are one thousand false alternatives, then seven hundred have already been
dropped and only three hundred are left. And then we will be reaching the right point.'
This is learning. Trying one experiment, seeing that it doesn't work, trying an
alternative, seeing that it doesn't work, the wise man drops it. The fool clings to it.
The fool calls it consistency. The fool says, 'I did it yesterday and I am going to do it
today, too. And I will do it tomorrow.' He is stubborn, pig-headed. He says, 'How can
I leave it? I have invested so much in it. I cannot change it.' Then he goes on insisting
on it and his whole life is wasted. And as death comes closer, he is desperate, he is
hopeless. Deep down in his guts he knows perfectly well that he is going to fail. He
has failed so many times and he is still trying the same thing without learning
anything at all.
This creates neurosis. The man who is capable of learning will never become
neurotic.
A disciple will never become neurotic. A disciple means one who is capable of
learning. Never become knowledgeable; always be in the process of learning.
Knowledgeability drives people neurotic. It is not just accidental that professors,
philosophers, psychiatrists, scholars, easily go mad. They have learned and they have
reached the conclusion that there is no more to learn. The moment you decide that
there is no more to learn, you have stopped growing. To stop growing is neurosis -that is the second definition.
The world was very different in the past, obviously. About six weeks' worth of
sensory stimuli six hundred years ago is what we now get in a day. Six weeks' worth
of stimulation, information, we are getting in a single day -- about forty times the
pressure to learn and adapt. Modern man has to be capable of learning more than man
has ever been before, because there is more to learn now. Modern man has to become
capable of adapting to new situations every day because the world is changing so fast.
It is a great challenge.
A great challenge, if accepted, will help tremendously in the expansiOn of
consciousness. Either modern man is going to be utterly neurotic or modern man is
going to be transformed by the very pressure. It depends on how you take it. One
thing is certain: there is no way of going back. The sensory stimuli will go on
increasing more and more. You will be getting more and more information and life
will be changing, with faster and faster rhythms. And you will have to be capable of
learning, of adapting, to new things.
In the past man lived in an almost static world. Everything was static. You would
leave the world exactly as your father had left it to you. You would not have changed
anything at all. Nothing was changed. There was no question of learning too much. A
little bit of learning was enough. And then you had spaces in your mind, empty spaces,
which helped people to remain sane. Now there is no more empty space, unless you
create it deliberately.
Meditation is needed today more than ever before. Meditation is needed so much that
it is almost a question of life and death. In the past it was a luxury; few people -- a
Buddha, a Mahavira, a Krishna -- were interested in it. Other people were naturally
silent, naturally happy, sane. There was no need for them to think of meditation; in an
unconscious way they were meditating. Life was moving so silently, moving so
slowly, that even the most stupid people were capable of adapting to it. Now the
change is so tremendously fast, with such speed, that even the most intelligent people
feel incapable of adapting to it. Every day life is different, and you have to learn again
-- you have to learn and learn again and again. You can never stop learning now; it has
to be a life-long process. To the very point of death you will have to remain a learner,
only then can you remain sane, can you avoid neurosis. And the pressure is great --
forty times greater.
How to relax this pressure? You will have to go deliberately into meditative moments.
If a person is not meditating at least one hour a day, then neurosis will not be
accidental, he will create it himself.
For one hour he should disappear from the world into his own being. For one hour he
should be so alone that nothing penetrates him -- no memory, no thought, no
imagination; for one hour no content in his consciousness, and that will rejuvenate
him and that will refresh him. That will release new sources of energy in him and he
will be back in the world, younger, fresher, more able to learn, with more wonder in
his eyes, with more awe in his heart -- again a child.
This pressure to learn, and the old habit of not learning, is driving people crazy. The
modern mind is really super-loaded, and no time is given to digest it, to assimilate it
into one's own being. That is where meditation comes in and becomes more
significant than ever. Without giving time for the mind to rest in meditation we
repress all of the messages that are pouring in continuously. We refuse to learn -- we
say we have not got time. Then the messages begin to accumulate. If you don't have
time enough to listen to the messages that your mind is receiving continuously, they
start accumulating -- just like files accumulating on your table, piles of letters
accumulating on your table, because you have not time enough to read and answer
them. Exactly like that your mind becomes cluttered -- so many files waiting to be
looked into, so many letters to be read, to be answered, so many challenges to be
taken, to be faced.
I have heard...
Mulla Nasrudin was saying one day, 'If something wrong happens today, I will not
have time for at least three months to look into it. So many wrong things have already
happened which are waiting there. If something wrong happens today,' he said, 'I will
not have time to look into it for three months at least.'
A queue. You can see that queue inside yourself -- and the queue goes on growing.
And the bigger the queue, the less and less space you have; the bigger the queue, the
more and more noise inside -- because everything that you have accumulated
demands your attention.
This usually starts at about the age of five when real learning virtually stops, and this
lasts until death. In the old days it was okay. Five or seven years were enough to learn
all that you would need in your life; that would do. Seven years' learning would do for
seventy years of life. But now that is not possible. You cannot stop learning because
new things are always happening and you cannot face those new things with old ideas.
You cannot depend on your parents and their knowledge, you cannot even depend on
your teachers in the school and the university, because what they are talking about is
already out of date. Much more has happened. Much water has gone down the
Ganges.
This was my experience. When I was a student I was surprised at my professors'
knowledge because it was thirty years old. It was when they were young that they had
gathered it from their teachers. Since then they had not looked at what had happened
That knowledge was absolutely useless. I was constantly in conflict with my
professors, I was thrown out of many colleges, expelled, because the professors said
that they could not cope with me. And I was not creating any trouble, I was simply
making them aware that what they were saying was out of date. But that hurts the ego.
They had learned it in their own university days and they were thinking that the world
had stopped then and there.
Now students cannot depend on teachers and children cannot depend on their parents,
hence a great rebellion is on the way all over the world. It has nothing to do with
anything else. Students cannot respect their teachers anymore unless those teachers
continuously learn. They cannot be respected. For what? There is no reason. And
children cannot respect their parents because the approach of their parents looks very
primitive. Small children are becoming aware that what their parents say is out of date.
Parents will have to continuously learn if they want to help their children to grow and
teachers will have to continuously learn. Now no one can stop learning. And this
speed is going to grow continuously.
So, one thing: learning has not to be stopped, otherwise you will go neurotic; because
to stop learning means you are accumulating information which you have not
assimilated, digested, which has not become your blood and your bones and your
marrow. It will hang around you with great insistence to be taken in.
Secondly: you will need time to relax. This pressure is too much. You will need some
time to disappear from this pressure. Sleep cannot help you anymore because sleep
itself is becoming overburdened. Your day is so overloaded that when you go to sleep
only the body falls limp on the bed, but the mind continues to sort things out. That's
what you call dreaming: it is nothing but a desperate effort of the mind to sort things
out because you won't give any time to it.
You have to relax consciously into meditation. A few minutes of deep meditation will
keep you non-neurotic.
In meditation the mind unclutters, experiences are digested, and the overload
disappears, leaving the mind fresh and young and clear and clean.
In the past the input volume was one-tenth of one's time and the meditative time was
nine-tenths. Now just the reverse is the case: nine-tenths input volume time and
one-tenth meditative time. Very rarely do you relax. Very rarely do you just sit silently,
doing nothing. Even that one-tenth time of unconscious meditation is disappearing.
Once that happens, man will be utterly mad. And that is happening.
What do I mean by unconscious meditative time? You simply go into the garden, you
play around with your children -- that is unconscious meditative time. Or you swim in
the swimming pool -- that is unconscious meditative time. Or you mow your lawn, or
you listen to the birds -- that is unconscious meditative time. That too is disappearing
because whenever people have time, they are sitting before their TVs, glued to their
seats.
Now, tremendously dangerous information is being put into your mind by the TV. You
will not be able to digest it. Or you are reading newspapers. All kinds of nonsense is
being fed to you. Whenever you have time you put the radio or the TV on. Or
someday you are feeling very good and you want to relax and you go to the movie.
What kind of relaxation is this? The movie will not allow you relaxation, because
information is continuously thrown into you.
Relaxation means no information is thrown into you. Listening to a cuckoo will do,
because no information is fed to you. Listening to music will do, because no
information is thrown into you. Music has no language; it is pure sound. It does not
give any message; it simply delights you. Dancing will be good, music will be good,
working in the garden will be good, playing with children will be good, or just sitting
doing nothing will be good. This is the cure. And if you do it consciously, the impact
will be greater.
Create a balance. Neurosis is an unbalanced state of mind: too much activity and no
inactivity at all, too much masculine and no feminine at all, too much yang and too
little of yin. And you have to be fifty-fifty. You have to keep a deep balance. A
symmetry is needed inside you. You have to be an ARDHANA-RISHWAR, half man,
half woman, then you will never go neurotic.
And that is the whole process of the book, THE SECRET OF THE GOLDEN
FLOWER. It will make you disappear as man, as woman; it will make you one whole,
one unity; it will give you individuation.
Individuality is neither male nor female, it is simple unity. Strive to achieve it between
time spent doing versus time spent not doing. This is wholeness. This is what Buddha
called his Middle Way, MAJJHIM NIKAYA. Just be exactly in the middle. And
remember, you can become unbalanced to the other extreme too; you can become too
inactive. That will be dangerous also. That has its own pitfalls and dangers. If you
become too inactive, your life loses dance, your life loses joy, you start becoming
dead.
So I am not saying become inactive, I am saying let there be a balance between action
and inaction. Let them balance each other and you be just in the middle. Let them be
two wings of your being. No wing should be bigger than the other.
In the West, action has become too great; inaction has disappeared. In the East,
inaction became too great and action disappeared. The West knows affluence, richness,
on the outside and poverty inside; the East knows richness, affluence, inside and
poverty on the outside. Both are in misery because both have chosen extremes.
My approach is neither Eastern nor Western, my approach is neither male nor female,
my approach is neither of action nor inactiOn, my approach is that of utter balance,
symmetry, in you. Hence I say to my sannyasins: Don't leave the world. Be in the
world and yet be not of it. This is what Taoists call WEI WU WEI, action through
inaction -- the meeting of yin and yang, anima and animus; it brings enlightenment.
Imbalance is neurosis; balance is enlightenment.
The third question:
Question 3
ARE ALL WOMEN REALLY SOFT, FEMININE AND LOVING?
I have not said that -- that all women are really soft, feminine and loving. Neither are
all men aggressive, violent, ambitious, hard. Because deep down in you the
consciousness is neither. The anima and the animus, the male and the female exist in
your body chemistry. You can be a man physically, but deep inside you may have
chosen the feminine part. A woman may be a woman physically but she may have
chosen the masculine part -- both parts are available -- then the body remains
feminine but the woman will become masculine.
That is what is happening to women connected with the Women's Liberation
movement: they are dropping their feminineness, they are becoming as aggressive as
man. They are trying to compete with all kinds of foolishnesses that man has. They
want to have all those foolishnesses themselves, too -- they cannot be left behind.
The idea of being equal is creating a foolish idea of being similar. To be equal does
not mean to be similar. Equality is a totally different dimension; similarity is different.
Yes, a woman can choose her masculine part too much, she can become identified
with it, then her softness will disappear. A man can choose his feminineness, then his
hardness will disappear. The body will remain sexually male or female, but the quality
surrounding the body, the vibe, will have to be that which you have chosen inside. A
man can choose to be a woman inside, a woman can choose to be a man inside.
And it is not a choice that you make once and forever, you can change it every
moment. There are moments when a woman is very soft and there are moments when
she can be very hard, very cruel. There are moments when a man is very hard,
aggressive, but there are moments when he can be very soft. Even a Ghengis Khan is
very soft to his children. To his wife he is very soft.
I have heard...
The plain and strongly-built daughter of a Field-Marshal was engaged to be married
to a young officer on her father's staff. 'Couldn't you do something for Frank now that
he has asked me to marry him?' she asked her father one day.
'There's not much I can do really,' replied the Field-Marshal, 'except get him a medal
for gallantry.'
He was undersized, meek, diffident, and subdued, and he had applied for a job as a
night-watchman.
'Yes,' said the manager, dubiously, 'but the fact is we want someone who is restless
and uneasy, especially at night -- someone who thinks the worst of everybody,
someone who sleeps with one eye open. The kind of person, in short, who, when
roused, is the devil himself.'
'Alright,' said the meek lad, as he walked away, 'I'll send my wife.'
It depends on what you choose inside you. It is a choice. The body is not your choice,
but the vibe that will surround your body is a choice. And if you choose consciously,
you will have great freedom in your being, because you will know who you are and
what you are doing with your body.
The body is tremendously potential -- much can happen through it -- but people take it
for granted. It is as if a beautiful guitar has been given to you as a present and you just
keep it, not knowing the potential of it. You can play on the guitar, you can learn to
play on the guitar, and great music will be born. And then it depends on you what kind
of music it will be. You can create a music which is sad, you can create a music which
is celebrating, you can create music which is violent, you can create a music which is
soothing, loving, silent.
There are kinds of music. Classical music has a different quality: it soothes, it brings
you to a silence, rest. Modern pop music makes you restless, sexual; it drives you into
a kind of frenzy. But the instruments are the same -- as are bodies.
A really wise person chooses to play what kind of music he wants to play on the body.
You can make your body like a Buddha or you can become a Mohammed Ali. It
depends on you. Look at Buddha's body -- how soft, although he is a man; how
feminine, although he is a man. He has chosen grace.
It depends on you. It is your choice. You are not confined by your chemistry. You can
be confined only if you remain unconscious in your chemistry, otherwise your
chemistry has infinite potential: it can be put to a thousand and one uses. And to learn
how to use one's body, how to behave with one's body, how to relate with one's body,
is a great art. Millions of people just take their body for granted; they never search for
its possibilities. Their body remains a seed. It never becomes a Golden Flower.
The fourth question:
Question 4
YOUR DISCOURSE ON POLITICS AND THE POISON IT IS WAS
EXTRAORDINARY! I HAVE LIVED IN MANY COMMUNITIES, ALL SINCERE
AND WELL-MEANING, YET EVERYWHERE I WAS APPALLED AT THE
UNCONSCIOUS POLITICAL AMBITION AND INTRIGUES WHICH ARE
UNDERLYING AND DORMANT BUT COME UP IN SPITE OF THE GOOD
INTENTIONS.
HOW ARE YOU HANDLING IT HERE? ARE YOU ALLOWING IT FREE PLAY
SO THAT PEOPLE CAN WORK IT OUT OF THEIR SYSTEMS -- OR ARE YOU
NIPPING IT IN THE BUD AND WEEDING OUT THOSE THAT SHOW THE
SLIGHTEST TENDENCIES?
MY HUMBLE EXPERIENCE IS THAT SOME PEOPLE CAN NEVER, NEVER
GET ANYTHING GOING WITHOUT POLITICS -- WITHOUT GETTING
THEMSELVES HIGHER AND HIGHER IN THE POWER GAME. THEY ARE
ALL OVER -- PERHAPS EVEN HERE -- SPREADING THEIR POISON.
Stilwell, I don't believe in repressing anything -- not even the poisonous politics -because repressed, it remains in your system; sooner or later it will take you over. And
the longer it has been repressed, the more dangerous it becomes, because the deeper it
goes into your very source of being. And if you are poisoned at your very source, at
the very centre, then it becomes really difficult to uproot it.
My approach about everything is to bring it to the surface. So I never nip anything in
the bud, I help it to become a flower. And after the flowering, the flower starts
withering of its own accord. That's the natural way.
So in my commune, nothing is prevented. Ambitions are allowed, accepted, as being
part of human beings, their ignorance, their unawareness. But I make my people
aware that these are games. So play them, but play consciously. Become more and
more alert and never let them become serious. If they don't become serious, there is
no need to become afraid of them. The problem is that when a game becomes so
serious then you forget completely that it is a game.
That's where the politician is lost. He thinks he is doing something very serious. He is
doing something very silly, but he thinks he is doing something very serious. All that
is needed is to make him aware that this is a game. If you want to play it, play, but
don't become so serious about it. Keep a little bit of humour. A sense of humour is one
of the greatest keys to transform human personalities.
Yes, you are right! Here also -- because these people come from the world and they
bring all kinds of infections from the world. They are not coming here fresh, they
have been already conditioned. Ambition has already been put into them -- their
parents, the society, church, school, college, university. Everywhere they have been
poisoned; they bring all that poison here. You cannot nip it in the bud otherwise they
will become split and hypocritical. Then on the surface they will show humility,
humbleness, and deep down they will think, 'There is nobody more humble than me'
-- and politics has come in. Deep down they will think, 'I am the greatest egoless
person in the world' -- but the 'greatest'.
Now a new kind of ambition has entered. It is the same ambition, now the direction is
new. And it is more subtle, and, of course, more dangerous too. And now it is pious,
because it is in the name of religion. So even the poison no longer looks like poison; it
is labelled nectar. It is religious poison, pious poison, and it is more difficult to get rid
of the pious poison.
So I don't repress anything and I don't help any kind of repression, I help people to
bring whatsoever they have in them to the surface. I help them to be aware of it, to
watch it, to see the foolishness of it, to see the stupidity of it -- not because I say it is
stupid, because if I say something and you only believe it, you will repress it. I help
you -- my function here is to help you become aware on your own. The day you see
the stupidity of it, it will drop of its own accord.
So I have created all kinds of games here. Yes, there is a hierarchy too so people who
want to play, they can play the game of hierarchy. But sooner or later -- because the
whole effort is to make them conscious -- they become aware that this is a game. And
the moment THEY see it is a game, they are out of it. Seeing something as a game
makes you laugh at it -- a hearty laugh at your own self. And when a man can laugh at
his own stupidities he is becoming wise. Laughter has to come out of awareness.
Ambitious people also laugh. Just the other day I was reading that when Jimmy Carter
came to power he was laughing so beautifully that you could have counted his teeth.
And some people have counted -- eleven teeth were showing. Now only seven are
showing. Now the smile is disappearing because his prestige is falling every day.
People's expectations are not fulfilled: what he has promised he cannot deliver. Only
seven! Soon you will see five, three, two. By the time he goes, the smile will have
disappeared completely. You will not see a single tooth. This is not real laughter. Even
this laughter is political, managed, practised, cultivated.
There is a different kind of laughter that comes to you when you see all kinds of
foolishnesses that you have been in -- and how seriously. When you see the whole
ridiculousness of your life pattern, your whole gestalt and its stupidity -- but not
because I say or Buddha says or Master Lu-tsu says... It is not a question of belief, it
is not a question of somebody else's belief, it is not a question of somebody else's
knowledge and you borrow it -- borrowed knowledge never helps -- it has to arise in
you.
My effort here is to make you aware of all that is hidden in you. All that you have
been doing unconsciously has to be done consciously, that's all. And sometimes
miracles happen.
Once a professor came to me. His problem, and it was really a problem, because to be
a professor and have such a problem is really difficult -- his problem was that he
walked like a woman. So whenever he passed by students would come and laugh and
giggle and he felt really bad. What to do about it? And he had been to the doctors and
the psychoanalysts and they could not help. They said, 'What can we do?' From his
very childhood he had been walking that way. And he tried not to walk like that, and
the more he tried, the more he failed.
There is a certain law -- hypnotists call it the law of reverse effect. You try hard to do
something and just the opposite happens.
So he was trying hard. His whole effort, his whole mind was concerned with not
walking like a woman, but he was walking like a woman more and more. I told him,
'Just do one thing -- because it is a miracle that you can walk like a woman, it is really
a miracle.' He said, 'What are you saying?' I said, 'It is a miracle! A woman can walk
that way because of a different musculature. Because of the womb she walks in a
certain way. No man can walk like that. You are unique!' He said, 'What are you
saying? And everybody is laughing at me.' I said, 'You are really unique. You have
done something miraculous. It is magical. You forget all about it. My suggestion is
that you start walking consciously like a woman. Make it a point to walk like a
woman.' He said, 'What are you suggesting? I have tried my whole life not to walk
like a woman, then too I walk like a woman. And if I start walking like a woman what
will happen?' I said, 'You just try in front of me.' And at least twenty, thirty people
were sitting there. He said, 'Here?' I said 'Here. You try.'
He tried and he failed! He could not -- he could not walk like a woman. And he
looked very surprised. He said, 'What happened?' I said, 'You have to understand the
law of reverse effect. Now go to the university, anywhere, and consciously try to walk
like a woman -- because it is very difficult to walk like a woman unless you are a
woman.' And since then he has not walked like a woman. He became conscious of it.
It was an unconscious mechanism. Unconsciousness was the root cause of it. Just
become conscious, and it disappears.
Man's problems are rooted in the unconscious. And what do you go on doing? You go
on repressing those problems into the unconscious. Where else will you repress them?
There is nowhere else to repress them. Whenever you repress something, you repress
it into the unconscious. That's how the unconscious is created.
I don't have an unconscious because I never repress anything. The unconscious is
created by repressions. The child does not have an unconscious. By and by he will
have. And the old man has more of the unconscious than the conscious because he has
been repressing his whole life. The unconscious functions like a basement.
Whatsoever is useless, you throw into the basement. It accumulates there. It becomes
a junkyard. That is what your unconscious is. And from the unconscious, things arise
and take possession of you. All the ghosts that take possession of you come from the
unconscious not from the graveyards. Your unconscious is the graveyard where those
ghosts are born, and whenever they can find an opportunity, an occasion, to sneak up
and possess you, they will possess you. And they possess with revenge, with a
vengeance.
Now, to repress it is to help the unconscious more. That is the law of reverse effect.
Your unconscious will become more and more powerful. You are feeding it and
nourishing it. My whole approach is that consciousness is liberation. Awareness is the
solution. Just become more conscious of whatsoever you are doing.
Once it happened...
A thief came to a great Master, Nagarjuna. He had come for a certain reason.
Nagarjuna used to live naked -- one of the great Indian mystics and one of the greatest
alchemists. He would have been the right person to comment on THE SECRET OF
THE GOLDEN FLOWER. C.G. Jung was not the right person to comment on it.
He came into a great capital. The queen was a follower of Nagarjuna. She came with a
golden begging bowl and told Nagarjuna, 'Give your wooden begging bowl to me. I
will keep it as a treasure. And I have brought this golden begging bowl for you.' She
was afraid that maybe Nagarjuna would say, 'I don't touch gold, I am an ascetic.' But
Nagarjuna was an enlightened person, he said, 'Okay.' So he took the golden begging
bowl studded with valuable diamonds.
A thief saw Nagarjuna moving with the golden begging bowl, naked, and all those
diamonds shining in the sun. He said, 'Look! How long can this man have this?
Somebody is going to take it from him. Why not me? This naked man cannot keep it
long. From where did he get it?'
So the thief followed Nagarjuna. Nagarjuna was staying outside the capital in the
ruins of an old temple where there were no doors, not even windows -- nothing -- just
walls all falling down, just a small shelter. A little bit of roof was still safe. The thief
said, 'How will he protect his valuable thing? In the night at least he will go to sleep.'
So he waited outside by the side of the wall near a window. Nagarjuna wanted to have
a little sleep in the afternoon -- that was his habit. Seeing the thief following him, he
knew perfectly well why he was following. He was not following Nagarjuna, he was
following the golden bowl, so why force him to wait there? He was going to take it
anyway. 'When I fall asleep,' thought Nagarjuna, 'he will take it, so why force him to
wait unnecessarily?' He threw the begging bowl out of the window. The thief could
not believe what was happening. But this man looked really charismatic naked, so
beautiful, so divine-looking, with such a precious thing with him, and he had thrown
it! Now the thief could not leave. He was so attracted by the person, so enchanted,
almost hypnotized. He looked in through the window and said, 'Sir, can I come in and
have a Little chit-chat with you?'
Nagarjuna said, 'That's why I threw the bowl outside -- so that you could come in. You
would have come in when I had gone to sleep but that would have been meaningless.
Come in!' The thief came in and he said, 'Looking at you, seeing that you can throw
such a valuable thing away so easily -- and I know why you have thrown it, you have
thrown it away i-or me -- a great desire has arisen in me. Will there ever be a time
when I will also be so detached, so aloof, so free of possessions as you are?'
Nagarjuna said, 'The time has come. Accidentally you are already caught. I will give
you the secret of how to become transcendental to the world, how to go beyond, how
not to possess.'
The man said, 'But let me first tell you that I am a thief. And I have gone to many
saints before, but they all say -- because I am a well-known thief -- they all say, "First
stop stealing, only then can you meditate." So let me tell you first. You may not know.'
Nagarjuna said, 'Then it simply shows that you have never been to a saint up to now.
They must have been ex-thieves; otherwise who cares who you are? And why make it
a condition that first you have to stop stealing? I will give you the meditation. It is
very simple: you go on stealing. Just do one thing: do it consciously, do it with full
awareness. When you are going to steal, move fully aware, alert to what you are doing.
And after fifteen days you report to me.'
But by the seventh day the thief was back and he said, 'You deceived me. For seven
days continuously I have not been able to steal. And it was not that I was prevented, I
reach the places where great treasures are available, but I cannot do it. If I become
aware, I start laughing at my foolishness. What am I doing -- stealing things which
will be taken away from me? Sooner or later I will have to die. The whole thing looks
so childish. If I become aware, I cannot steal. If I steal, I lose my awareness. Both
cannot go together.'
Nagarjuna said, 'Then you decide. Whichever you choose, you can choose. You can
drop awareness and steal or, if you want to have awareness, then drop stealing.' And
the man said, 'I have tasted awareness. It is impossible to drop it. I will drop stealing,
because awareness is far more valuable, far more significant. I have only tasted a little
bit of it, but it gives such joy. And I have been stealing my whole life, and I have
accumulated many valuable things in my house, but they have never given me any joy.
They only give me more and more fear.'
Awareness is the only secret key: it transforms. It doesn't matter what your illness is,
awareness is the only medicine: it cures all illness. If you are politically minded -- and
everybody is... In some way or other everybody is trying to be more powerful than the
other. Even in relationships politics continue -- the husband tries to be more powerful
than the wife, the wife tries to be more powerful than the husband -- hence the
constant conflict, even between parents and children. Everywhere there is conflict. It
is all politics, different faces of politics.
So when you come to me I cannot expect you to come without politics -- that is
impossible. If you are without politics, you will not need to come -- wherever you are,
God will come to you. When you come here I accept all your human weaknesses. I
have no condemnation. I don't tell you to repress; I don't want to make you feel guilty
about anything. If you want to play the game of politics you are allowed to play it -with only one condition: become more and more alert while playing it. Have a sense
of humour, and then all is well. Sooner or later it will wither away of its own accord.
And so is the case with sensuality, sexuality; so is the case with possessiveness; so is
the case with everything that man suffers from.
The fifth question:
Question 5
BELOVED OSHO, THIS MORNING IN THE LECTURE, I WENT SO DEEP THAT
I WAS SURE THE BODY WAS GOING TO DIE RIGHT THEN AND THERE. I
BECAME VERY AFRAID AND STRUGGLED BACK TO THE SURFACE. NOW I
AM AFRAID IT WILL HAPPEN AGAIN. WHAT TO DO?
Saguna, you are a fool. You should have allowed it to happen. You missed a great
opportunity. If at any time you again start feeling that you are dying in my presence,
die immediately! That means your ego was on the verge of disappearing and
something tremendously valuable was about to happen. You missed it.
But the first time it happens that way to everybody. One shrinks back in fear, escapes
back into his ego, clings, holds. Where can you find a better place to die? If you can
die in my presence you will attain to life, eternal life, life abundant. If you can die in
satsang, in the presence of the Master, you will be resurrected.
But that courage has to be there. Gather your courage, and next time it starts
happening, let it happen.
The sixth question:
Question 6
IS PSYCHOANALYSIS REALLY THAT USELESS?
No, not always. Sometimes it helps too.
Meditate on this story.
Felix Simons was a nice guy but a social flop. Although he was thirty-five, he had
never conquered his childhood habit of bedwetting. Finally, one of his friends told
him, 'Look, Felix, you might as well know the truth. We're all very fond of you, but
nobody can stand to come into your house because it smells, and you're driving your
wife up a wall. Why don't you see a psychiatrist about your problem? Enuresis is not
too uncommon and it can be cured. Get it over with once and for all!'
Felix was convinced. After six months of treatment he ran into the same friend.
'Well, Felix, did you take my advice?'
'Yes,' answered Felix, 'I've been seeing a psychiatrist three times a week for six
months now.'
'Well, have you had any results?'
'Oh,' beamed Felix, 'great results!'
'You don't wet your bed anymore?'
'I still do, but now I'm proud of it!'
Psychoanalysis helps only in this way. It makes you proud of things you have been
guilty about. Religion has created guilt in people. Psychoanalysis has moved to the
other extreme -- psychoanalysis is a reaction to religious guilt. This has to be
understood.
Religion has done a great wrong to humanity. It has wounded the human heart by
creating guilt. It lives on guilt -- the whole religious world. Hindu, Christian,
Mohammedan, these are only different names for the same trick -- how to create guilt
in people. Once you have created guilt in people, they are caught in your net; you can
exploit them. Guilt is the spider's net. Make people feel guilty and they are in your
power. Then you can manipulate them. You can force them to surrender. You can
force them to do things for you, for the church, for the priest. They are guilty. They
are afraid they are going to suffer, they want to find a way out.
First create guilt, then they are bound to come to you, because they will have to find a
way out of guilt. Then tell them to pray, then tell them to do some ritual, some mantra.
But first the guilt has to be created.
I have heard...
Two persons were doing great business. They were partners. The business was simple.
One would enter a town in the night and throw coal tar on people windows, and after
two, three days, the other would come to clean. And he would make it known in the
town that he knew how to clean coal tar from the windows. By the time he had
cleaned the windows, the other would have prepared another town for him. Then he
would go to the other town. They were doing really great business. They were
partners.
Religion depends on creating guilt. First throw coal tar on people's hearts and then tell
them how to cleanse it. And then they have to pay for it.
Psychoanalysis is a reaction. I don't call it a revolution but only a reaction. It reacted
against this whole business and it started doing the opposite: it makes you proud of
your things. It says, 'This is perfectly normal. If you are wetting your bed this is
perfectly normal. There is nothing wrong in it. You should be really proud of it.' It
gives support to you as you are.
Religion condemns you as you are. Psychoanalysis convinces you that you are the
only way you can be, and you are perfectly right, you are okay. That is the message of
psychoanalysis. Both are wrong. Neither do you need to feel guilty nor do you need to
feel perfectly okay. If you feel guilty you will fall victim to the church, to the priest,
and they will exploit you. If you start feeling you are perfectly okay, you become
dormant; your growth stops.
You have to know one thing: that life means evolution, growth, life means going
higher and higher -- to new planitudes, to new planes of being. There is no need to
feel guilty for what you are, but there is every need to have a tremendous longing to
rise higher, because you are a seed, a potential, and you can become God. If you
accept yourself as you are and you settle with it, you will remain a seed. You will
never become a tree and you will never be able to have a dialogue with the stars. You
will not be able to play with the wind and the rain and the sun. You will remain
shrunk into a seed. But there is no need to feel guilty. A seed is a seed -- there is no
need to feel guilty -- but the seed has to become a tree. There is really a great need to
inquire into one's potential. Never feel guilty, never feel proud. Just feel tremendously
happy that a great opportunity has been given to you to grow.
And this whole life is a challenge to growth. That is true religion and that is true
psychology too -- because a true religion cannot be anything other than a true
psychology. I call that psychology 'the psychology of the Buddhas'. It does not make
you feel guilty; it accepts you, it loves you, but it doesn't make you feel proud to be as
you are. It gives you a great challenge to be more than you are. It gives you a divine
discontent. It makes you aflame with a desire to go higher and higher -- not higher
than others, but higher than yourself. Tomorrow should not be just a repetition of
today -- that is the meaning of divine discontent. Today should not be just a repetition
of yesterday, otherwise you have not lived. Today must bring some new gifts to you,
some new flowers, some new rays. Some new windows MUST open today.
To feel guilty means to remain possessed by the past; to feel proud means to remain
wherever you are, whatsoever you are. To have a divine discontent means to grow, to
search, to seek, to explore. And life is nothing but an adventure, a constant adventure,
into the unknown.
So I don't want you to feel guilty and I don't want you to feel proud. When you drop
both, real life begins.
And the last question:
Question 7
WHY IS COMMUNICATION SO DIFFICULT?
It is not only difficult, it is impossible. It is really a miracle if sometimes it happens,
because two persons are two persons. Their past experiences are different, their gestalt
is different, their knowledge is different, their personalities are different. They are two
worlds. They speak different languages; it may be the same language, but they speak
different languages. They give different meaning to words, different nuances, different
shades and different colours.
When you are looking at a rose flower and if there are five persons looking at the rose
flower, don't think for a single moment that you are looking at the same rose flower -you cannot; only five Buddhas standing beside the flower will be able to look at the
same rose flower. You cannot, because five Buddhas means five zeros, five no-minds.
Only two no-minds can commune because there is nothing to hinder now, nothing to
interpret with. It is direct.
But when five minds are standing beside the rose flower they only believe that they
are looking at the same rose flower, because they have different ideas of the rose,
different experiences of the rose, different past impacts of the rose. All that is there in
their eyes, layer upon layer. This rose is so far away, so distant.
For example, one may have loved a woman who was obsessed by roses, but she
betrayed him. Now the rose will only remind him of that betrayal and the woman.
That is not the others' experience. The other may have seen a dead man garlanded
with a rose garland. The rose will remind him of death -- he may feel a little fear. The
third may have his own experience of the rose. It will depend. And that's how it is
with each experience .
Only two no-minds can communicate. Even without words, communication happens.
It is a communion. But minds are bound to clash, conflict.
I will tell you a few stories.
First:
Seated in an elegantly appointed restaurant, Chico Marx was studying the oversized
menu when the head waiter approached his table. The waiter folded his hands in front
of him and with proper Continental demeanour enquired, 'And what is your pleasure,
Monsieur?'
'Girls,' Chico replied. 'What's yours?'
The second story:
The young husband and his bride flew to Miami for their honeymoon and for days
neither hide nor hair was seen of them. On the morning of the sixth day, they entered
the dining-room for breakfast. As the waiter approached them for their order the bride
turned to her husband and said coyly, 'You know what I'd like, honey, don't you?'
'Yes, I know,' he replied wearily, 'but we have got to eat some time too!'
And the third story:
The boss had been after his secretary for almost a year. He had been suggesting all
kinds of things to her. On this particular evening he was unusually persistent.
'Oh, come on!' he said. 'Let's go out and have supper, then go to the theatre, then to a
nightclub and then we will go up to my apartment.'
The blond clipped back, 'I would like you to comprehend that I am adamant and
didactic in my refusal of your salacious, mendacious and denigrating proposition.'
The boss said, 'I don't get it.'
The secretary answered, 'That's just what I have been trying to tell you.'
Language is the problem. Different experiences, different minds, different pasts,
different patterns, different habits, different personalities.
You ask me why it is difficult to communicate. It is not only difficult, it is almost
impossible. If once in a while it happens, feel tremendously fortunate. Yes, once in a
while it happens. When you are deeply in love with somebody, it happens. Then
language is not needed, then your very presence, your very vibe communicates. Then,
for a moment, in deep love, you slip out of your minds. In deep love, for a moment
you become Buddhas, you become no-minds.
So only in rare moments of love does communication happen, otherwise it is always a
quarrel, a subtle conflict. You say one thing, the other understands something else.
The other says something, you understand something else. If you really want to
communicate, become more and more loving -- because love is needed, not language.
Language is a barrier, love is a bridge.
If you really want to communicate, start slipping out of your mind. Become more and
more zeros, no-minds, and suddenly you will see miracles happening.
It is happening here. The new people who come here are not in tune with me. For a
few days I say something, they understand something else. But as they become more
and more open to my love, communication starts happening. To those who have really
lived long with me and have become intimate, to those with whom the barrier of
language has disappeared, just a look in their eyes or just a touch of my hand, and
there is communication -- not only communication, but communion.
That's why just recently I have started a new way of communing with my sannyasins:
just to touch them, just to let them feel my energy. The more you become intimate
with me, the less and less words will be needed -- because you will start hearing me,
and then there will be no need of words. I will continue to speak for those who will be
coming -- more and more will be coming, thousands are on the way -- but those who
have been here with me long enough or deep enough... And depth can happen even in
a single moment. It is not only a question of time, it is a question of intensity.
Sometimes it happens that when a person comes to me for the first time, the first
moment of contact, and he becomes intimate as if he has been with me for many lives.
And not only do I feel that, he also immediately feels that he has come home, that this
is the place he has been searching for his whole life or for many lives. Then
communication immediately happens, then there is no conflict.
In fact, the moment that there is communion and there is no conflict is the moment of
your real initiation. Then what I say is secondary, what I am becomes primary. Then
you relate to me directly. Then you are not distracted by my words -- because I am not
a consistent man, I contradict myself. And I contradict myself deliberately to help you
to get rid of your expectation of consistency, to help you to get rid of language.
Listening to me contradicting myself again and again, slowly slowly you will see that
words are only games; you will not be serious about words. The day that awakening
has happened in you, you relate to me directly. Then there is no medium needed; then
you are bridged.
I am in love, I am love. The moment you are in love and you become love,
communion happens. Communion is a function of love, not of language. In fact,
language functions as a hindrance, not as a help.
Remember it: to be with me is to be with an emptiness, a nobody. I have nothing to
offer to you, I have nothing to teach you, I have no philosophy. I am, but I have no
philosophy. I am, but I have nothing to offer. I am, but I have nothing to teach. And
you have to learn to be with this l-amness. And then you will know what communion
is.
Communion is a phenomenon of love, a flowering of love. It has nothing to do with
language, with words -- not at all; it is silence.
The Secret of Secrets, Vol 1
Chapter #13
Chapter title: A Listening Heart
23 August 1978 am in Buddha Hall
Archive code:
7808230
ShortTitle:
SOS113
Audio: Yes
Video:
No
Length: 107 mins
MASTER LU-TSU SAID: THE DECISION MUST BE CARRIED OUT WITH A
COLLECTED HEART AND NOT SEEKING SUCCESS; SUCCESS WILL THEN
COME OF ITSELF. IN THE FIRST PERIOD OF RELEASE THERE ARE CHIEFLY
TWO MISTAKES: INDOLENCE AND DISTRACTION. BUT THAT CAN BE
REMEDIED; THE HEART MUST NOT ENTER INTO THE BREATHING TOO
COMPLETELY. BREATHING COMES FROM THE HEART. WHAT COMES OUT
OF THE HEART IS BREATH. AS SOON AS THE HEART STIRS THERE
DEVELOPS BREATH-ENERGY. BREATH-ENERGY IS ORIGINALLY
TRANSFORMED ACTIVITY OF THE HEART. WHEN OUR IDEAS GO VERY
FAST THEY IMPERCEPTIBLY PASS INTO FANTASIES WHICH ARE ALWAYS
ACCOMPANIED BY THE DRAWING OF A BREATH, BECAUSE THIS INNER
AND OUTER BREATHING HANGS TOGETHER LIKE TONE AND ECHO.
DAILY WE DRAW INNUMERABLE BREATHS AND HAVE AN EQUAL
NUMBER OF FANTASIES. AND THUS THE CLARITY OF THE SPIRIT EBBS
AWAY AS WOOD DRIES OUT AND ASHES_ DIE.
SO THEN SHOULD A MAN HAVE NO IMAGINING L HIS MIND? ONE
CANNOT BE WITHOUT IMAGININGS. SHOULD ONE NOT BREATHE? ONE
CANNOT BE WITHOUT BREATHING. THE BEST WAY IS TO MAKE A
MEDICINE OF THE ILLNESS. SINCE HEART AND BREATH ARE MUTUALLY
DEPENDENT THE CIRCULATION OF THE LIGHT MUST BE UNITED WITH
THE RHYTHM OF BREATHING. FOR THIS LIGHT OF THE EAR IS ABOVE
ALL NECESSARY. THERE IS A LIGHT OF THE EYE AND A LIGHT OF THE
EAR. THE LIGHT OF THE EYE IS THE UNITED LIGHT OF THE SUN AND
MOON OUTSIDE. THE LIGHT OF THE EAR IS THE UNITED SEED OF SUN
AND MOON WITHIN. THE SEED IS THUS THE LIGHT IN CRYSTALLIZED
FORM. BOTH HAVE THE SAME ORIGIN AND ARE DIFFERENT ONLY IN
NAME THEREFORE UNDERSTANDING (EAR) AND CLARITY (EYE) ARE
ONE AND THE SAME EFFECTIVE LIGHT.
IN SITTING DOWN AFTER LOWERING THE LIDS ONE USES THE EYES TO
ESTABLISH A PLUMB-LINE AND THEN SHIFTS THE LIGHT DOWNWARD.
BUT IF THE TRANSPOSITION DOWNWARD IS NOT SUCCESSFUL THEN THE
HEART IS DIRECTED TOWARDS LISTENING TO THE BREATHING. ONE
SHOULD NOT BE ABLE TO HEAR WITH THE EAR THE OUTGOING AND
INTAKING OF THE BREATH. WHAT ONE HEARS IS THAT IT HAS NO TONE.
AS SOON AS IT HAS NO TONE THE BREATHING IS ROUGH AND
SUPERFICIAL AND DOES_ NOT PENETRATE INTO THe opeN. THEN THE
HEART MUST BE MADE QUITE LIGHT AND INSIGNIFICANT. THE MORE IT
IS RELEASED THE LESS IT becomes; THE LESS IT IS, THE QUIETER. ALL AT
ONCE IT BECOMES so QUIET THAT IT STOPS. THEN THE TRUE BREATHING
IS MANIFESTED AND THE FORM OF THE HEART COME TO CONSCIOUSES.
IF THE HEART IS LIGHT, THE BREATHING IS LIGHT, FOR EVERY
MOVEMENT OF THE HEART AFFECTS BREATH-ENERGY. IF BREATHING IS
LIGHT, THE HEART IS LIGHT, FOR EVERY MOVEMENT OF THE
BREATH-ENERGY AFFECTS THE HEART. IN ORDER TO STEADY THE
HEART, ONE BEGINS BY TAKING CARE OF THE BREATH-ENERGY. THE
HEART CANNOT BE INFLUENCED DIRECTLY. THEREFORE THE
BREATH-ENERGY IS USED AS A HANDLE, AND THIS IS WHAT IS CALLED
MAINTENANCE OF THE CONCENTRATED BREATH-ENERGY.
CHILDREN DO YOU NOT UNDERSTAND THE NATURE OF MOVEMENT?
MOVEMENT CAN BE PRODUCED BY OUTSIDE MEANS. IT IS ONLY
ANOTHER NAME FOR MASTERY. ONE CAN MAKE THE HEART MOVE
MERELY BY RUNNING. SHOULD ONE NOT ALSO BE ABLE TO BRING IT TO
REST BY CONCENTRATED QUIETNESS? THE GREAT HOLY ONE. WHO
KNEW HOW THE HEART AND BREATH-ENERGY MUTUALLY INFLUENCE
ONE ANOTHER HAVE THOUGHT OUT AN EASIER PROCEDURE IN ORDER
TO HELP POSTERITY.
THE HEN CAN HATCH HER EGGS BECAUSE HER HEART IS ALWAYS
LISTENING. THAT IS AN IMPORTANT MAGIC SPELL. THE hen CAN HATCH
THE EGGS BECAUSE OF THE ENERGY OF THE HEAT. BUT THE ENERGY OF
THE HEAT CAN ONLY WARM THE SHELLS; IT CANNOT PENETRATE INTO
THE INTERIOR. THEREFORE SHE CONDUCTS THIS ENERGY INWARD
WITH HER HEART. THIS SHE DOES WITH HER HEARING. IN THIS WAY SHE
CONCENTRATES HER WHOLE HEART. WHEN THE HEART PENETRATES,
THE ENERGY PENETRATES, AND THE CHICK RECEIVES THE ENERGY OF
THE HEAT AND BEGINS TO LIVE. THEREFORE A HEN, EVEN WHEN AT
TIMES SHE LEAVES HER EGGS, ALWAYS HAS THE ATTITUDE OF
LISTENING WITH BENT EAR. THUS THE CONCENTRATION OF THE SPIRIT
IS NOT INTERRUPTED. BECAUSE THE CONCENTRATION OF THE SPIRIT
SUFFERS NO INTERRUPTION, NEITHER DOES THE ENERGY OF HEAT
SUFFER INTERRUPTION DAY OR NIGHT, AND THE SPIRIT AWAKENS TO
LIFE. THE AWAKENING OF THE SPIRIT IS ACCOMPLISHED BECAUSE THE
HEART HAS FIRST DIED. WHEN A MAN CAN LET HIS HEART DIE, THEN
THE PRIMAL SPIRIT WAKES TO LIFE. TO KILL THE HEART DOES NOT
MEAN TO LET IT DRY AND WITHER AWAY, BUT IT MEANS THAT IT HAS TO
BECOME UNDIVIDED AND GATHERED INTO ONE.
a story...
The ancient Zen Master, Dogo, had a disciple called Soshin. When Soshin became a
novice under Dogo, he doubtless expected that the Master would instruct him in Zen
the way a schoolmaster instructs his pupils. But Dogo said nothing special to him, and,
indeed, appeared to have no intention of conveying anything unusual to the disciple.
Finally Soshin could stand it no longer and reproached his Master for not having
shown him anything of Zen. 'But I have been giving you lessons in Zen ever since you
arrived, ' said Dogo.
'Oh?' said Soshin, 'When could that possibly have been?'
'When you bring me my morning tea,' said Dogo, 'I accept it. When you serve me a
meal, I eat it. When you bow to me, I acknowledge it. How else do you expect to
learn Zen?' Tao can be shared but cannot be divided. Tao can be shown but cannot be
said.
The Master lives in Tao. The disciple has to imbibe the spirit of it. It is not a teaching,
it cannot be a teaching -- all teachings are superficial. It has to be deeper than a
teaching. It has to be an energy transfer. It has to be heart to heart, soul to soul, body
to body. It cannot be verbal. And the disciple has to see, watch, observe, feel, love the
energy that is manifesting in the Master. Slowly slowly, by and by, just sitting by the
side of the Master, the disciple learns many secrets, although they are never taught.
One of the greatest secrets is that sitting by the Master's side, the disciple starts
breathing in the same way the Master breathes. There arises a synchronicity. And in
that synchronicity the two meet. It happens to lovers too. If you are in deep love with
someone, sitting side by side, sitting together with your beloved, if you observe, you
will be surprised that suddenly, for no reason at all, not cultivated by you, you are
breathing in the same way. When the beloved exhales, you exhale. When the beloved
inhales, you inhale. And suddenly you are connected, linked together.
Breath is of immense importance. That's how the mother is connected with the child.
And sometimes the distance may even be of a thousand miles between the child and
the mother but the mother's heart is immediately affected if the child is in danger.
Their breathing is so connected -- they breathe alike. And there is an obvious reason
for it. The child in the mother's womb was breathing through the mother for nine
months. He had no breath of his own. It was his mother's breath, and he was simply
following the mother's breathing. The mother was breathing for him, on his behalf; for
nine months they lived in a deep synchronicity. Even after the child is born, it
continues. If there is real love, it can continue for the whole of their lives.
Now there have been scientific proofs for it, too. In America, in Russia, and in other
countries also, many experiments have been done lately with birds, with animals. The
child is taken far away and then killed, and they watch the mother with all the
sophisticated instruments available. The moment the child is killed -- it may be a
thousand miles away -- immediately the mother's breath changes. Immediately, in the
exact moment, her breath becomes shaken; a trembling arises in her. She feels panic,
pain, for no reason, for no apparent reason. Something intuitive, something without
any medium between the two -- they are not visibly connected by anything, but there
are some invisible threads, too.
The disciple has to learn not what the Master is teaching but HOW THE MASTER IS
BEING. That's what Dogo means when he says, 'But I have been giving you lessons in
Zen ever since you arrived. When you bring me my morning tea, I accept it. Have you
not watched it -- the way I accept it? Have you not fallen in deep harmony with me
when I accept the tea from you? When you serve me a meal, I eat it. When you bow to
me, I acknowledge it. How else do you expect to learn Zen?'
The Master is saying: Watch my gestures -- the way I walk, the way I sit, the way I
breathe, the way I simply sit with you, the way I look at you, the way I respond in a
thousand and one small ways. Don't wait for a doctrine; the Master's presence is the
only doctrine there is. The real teaching is not a teaching at all, it is a transfer -- a
transfer beyond words and beyond scriptures. And the transfer happens through the
harmony of the breath.
I would also like to say to you that I have also nothing to offer to you as a teaching, as
a doctrine, as a philosophy, as a religion. I have nothing to teach at all. I have much to
share, but nothing to teach -- or, ONLY NOTHING to teach! But to feel that nothing
that I would like to be transferred to you, you will have to fall in rhythm with me. And
small things disturb, very small things. And you have to become aware slowly slowly
what the disturbances are.
In evening DARSHAN sometimes I call a few sannyasins to help me transfer energy
to somebody. I have been calling Pradeepa many times, but each time I call her
afterwards I feel nauseous. I was puzzled. What is happening? She is such a beautiful
woman, with great love for me; that's why I call her to help me. But it has been
happening each time. Just the last time I felt it so much that I had to look into it, into
the whole matter of it. Then I saw the point. She must be eating non-vegetarian food
meat, eggs and other things. That is making her breath ugly, that is making her whole
inner harmony disturbed. That's why she cannot fall in tune with me. And if she
cannot fall in tune, it creates a disturbance. She loves me, but her love is still
unconscious. If she becomes a little more conscious, she will see it, she will see that
to be with me you will have to change many things in you.
To be with me, and to move deeper with me, to have a heart-to-heart contact, you will
have to drop the unnecessary luggage that you carry. Now, there is no need to be a
non-vegetarian -- it is not for a meditator; otherwise, you are creating unnecessary
hindrances. It will disturb your softness -- it will create a kind of cruelty in you. You
may not be aware of it, because you are not aware at all, but when you come to me I
am just a mirror.
Now Pradeepa must be creating a great nauseousness in her own being. She may have
become accustomed to it, so she is not aware. But again and again I was feeling
nauseous, because when you relate to me with energy it is not one-way: my energy
moves into you, your energy moves into me. It can't be one-way. A circle is created;
circulation starts happening. This is just an example. And this is not only for Pradeepa,
it is for you all.
If you want to be more and more deeply in tune with me, if you want to share the Tao
that has happened to me, you will have to be more conscious, more alert to what you
are doing, what you are eating, what you are reading, what you are listening to, where
you are going, with whom you are mixing. It has to be a total effort. It has to be a
twenty-four-hour awareness, because small things gather together and their impact is
great.
If you have been angry with somebody and you have been fighting with somebody
and then you come to see me, naturally you will be far away from me. That's why
Jesus says if you go to the temple to pray and you remember that you have hurt
somebody, insulted somebody, that you are angry at somebody or if you have angered
somebody, first go and ask to be forgiven, only then come to pray; otherwise, you will
not be able to relate with God. First go and apologize. First clear things.
It happened when Michelangelo was working in the Sistine Chapel... He was making
a painting of Jesus. The painting was almost complete -- just the last finishing touches
-- but he was finding those last finishing touches very difficult. Jesus was not coming
out Jesus-like; something was missing in Jesus' face -- that softness, that feminineness
was not there, that love quality was not there. He tried and tried for days, and then he
remembered that he had quarrelled with a friend and he was carrying it in himself.
And then he remembered the saying of Jesus, that if you go to pray and you are not
feeling good about a friend or a brother, then first go and ask forgiveness.
He rushed out of the chapel, went to the friend, asked his forgiveness and told the
whole story. 'For days together I have been working, but I cannot bring out Jesus' face
as it should be. Something angry remains in it' -- because something was angry inside
him. If there is anger and hard feeling and you are going to paint, your hands will
paint, your painting will represent you, your painting will basically reflect you. And
the day he asked forgiveness and was forgiven, he came into a totally different mood.
And just a few minutes' work, and the painting was complete. And it is one of the
most beautiful paintings of Jesus. Just a few strokes and the painting came alive and
Jesus surfaced, because now Michelangelo's heart was in tune.
Tao can be shared. But then you have to learn the ways of sharing it with the Master,
and you have to be very watchful about many things. It is simple in a way and yet
very complex, too. Simple, because if you are really open and in harmony, it can
happen in a single split moment. Complex, because you will have to change your very
small habits of which you are not aware at all. You will have to change your total life.
That's why I say I have nothing to offer to you as a teaching, I have some energy to
impart to you as a provocation. I am not giving you a system of philosophy, a
theology, I am giving you myself. It is a challenge. My effort here is to wake you up.
You will have to be open, rhythmic, and you will have to watch small things in your
life. And the breath is the most important. You will have to learn how to breathe in
SATSANG how to breathe in the company of a Master, how to breathe when you are
in love.
The breathing continuously changes with your emotions. When you are angry, your
breathing is unrhythmic, asymmetrical. When you are in sexual lust, your breathing is
almost insane. When you are calm and quiet, joyful, your breathing has a musical
quality to it; your breathing is almost a song. When you are feeling at home in
existence, when you have no desires and are feeling contented, suddenly breathing
almost stops. When you are in a state of awe, of wonder, breathing stops for a moment.
And those are the greatest moments of life, because only in those moments when
breathing almost stops are you in utter tune with existence: you are in God and God is
in you.
Your experience of breathing has to be more and more profound, scrutinized,
observed, watched, analyzed. See how your breathing changes with your emotions,
and vice versa, how your emotions change with your breathing. For example, when
you are afraid, watch the change in your breath. And then one day try to change the
breath to the same pattern as when you were afraid. And you will be surprised that if
you change your breath to exactly what it was when you were afraid, fear will arise in
you -- immediately. Watch your breathing when you are deeply in love with
somebody; holding his hand, hugging your beloved, watch your breathing. And then,
one day, just sitting silently under a tree, watch yourself again breathing in the same
way. Make the pattern, fall into the same gestalt again. Breathe in the same way as if
you were hugging your beloved, and you will be surprised; the whole existence
becomes your beloved. Again there is great love arising ill yoU. They go together.
Hence in Yoga, in Tantra, in Tao -- in all these three great systems and sciences of
human consciousness and the expansion of human consciousness -- breathing is one
of the key phenomena. They have all worked on breathing.
Buddha's whole meditation system depends on a certain quality of breath. He says,
'Simply watch your breath, without changing it. Without in any way changing it,
simply watch.' But you will be surprised: the moment you watch, it changes: you
cannot help it. Buddha says, 'Don't change your breath, simply watch.' But the
moment you watch, it changes, because watchfulness has its own rhythm. That's why
Buddha says, 'You need not change it; simply watch.' Watchfulness will bring its own
kind of breathing -- it comes by itself. And slowly slowly you will be surprised: the
more watchful you become, the less you breathe. The breath becomes longer, deeper.
For example, if in one minute you were breathing sixteen breaths, now you may
breathe six, or four, or three. As you become watchful, the breath goes deeper,
becomes longer, and you are taking less and Less breaths in the same time period.
Then you can do it from the other side too. Breathe slowly, quietly, deep long breaths,
and suddenly you will see watchfulness arising in you. It is as if each emotion has a
polarity In your breathing system: it can be triggered by your breathing.
But the best way is to watch when you are in love, when you are sitting by the side of
your friend. Watch your breath, because that loving rhythm of breath is most
important: it will transform your whole being.
Love is where you feel most sharply the absurdity, the falsity, of your position as a
separated being. Yet by this very separation, this absurdity, you are able to express
what you could not express in any other way. By your very otherness you are able to
celebrate identity. Hence, the paradox of love; you are two and yet you feel one. You
are one, yet you know you are two. Oneness in twoness: that is the paradox of love.
And that has to be the paradox of prayer too, and meditation too. Ultimately you have
to feel as one with existence as you feel with your beloved, with your lover, with your
friend, with your mother, with your child, in some rare valuable moments. By your
very otherness you are able to celebrate identity.
The Vedas say: TATHVAMASI I am that. This is the greatest statement of love: I am
that, or, Thou art that. There is a clear-cut awareness of separation, and yet a deep
unity too. The wave is separate from the ocean and yet not separate from the ocean.
Watch your loving moments more and more. Be alert. See how your breathing
changes. See how your body vibrates. Just hugging your woman or your man, make it
an experiment, and you will be surprised. One day, just hugging, melting into each
other, sit at least for one hour, and you will be surprised: it will be one of the most
psychedelic experiences. For one hour, doing nothing, just hugging each other, falling
into each other, merging, melting into each other, slowly slowly the breathing will
become one. You will breathe as if you are two bodies but one heart. You will breathe
together. And when you breathe together -- not by any effort of your own, but just
because you are feeling so much love that the breathing follows -- those will be the
greatest moments, the most precious; not of this world, but of the beyond, the far out.
And in those moments you will have the first glimpse of meditative energy. In those
moments grammar gives up, language expires. In the attempt to say it, language
expires, and by its very death does point at last to what it cannot say. And that has to
be, on a profounder level, the relationship with the Master. Then only can Tao jump as
a flame from the Master to the disciple. You will have to learn the art of breathing.
The sutras.
Master Lu-tsu said: THE DECISION MUST HE CARRIED OUT WITH A
COLLECTED HEART AND NOT SEEKING SUCCESS; SUCCESS WILL THEN
COME OF ITSELF.
A tremendously significant statement. A key statement: THE DECISION MUST HE
CARRIED OUT WITH A COLLECTED HEART...
The first thing: a man is born only when he becomes decisive. With decision is the
birth of man. Those who live in indecisiveness are not really men yet. And millions
live in indecisiveness; they cannot decide about anything. They always lean upon
others; somebody else should decide for them. Hence people hang around authorities.
Authoritativeness continues in the world for the single reason that millions of people
cannot decide for themselves. They have always to be given an order. Once the order
is given, they follow it. But this is slavery, this is how they are preventing the birth of
their own soul. Decision should arise in your being, because with decisiveness
integrity arises. Remember, make a few decisions. Decisions will make you
individual.
What is indecisiveness? It means you are a crowd; many voices in you are
contradicting each other, and you cannot decide whether to go this way or that. Even
in small things people are indecisive: whether to go to see this movie or that -- and
they are indecisive. Indecisiveness has become almost their very style of life. To
purchase this or to purchase that? Just watch people when they go shopping. See their
indecisiveness. Just sit in any shop and just watch people coming and going -customers -- and you will be surprised: people don't know how to decide. And those
who don't know how to decide will remain vague, cloudy, confused. With decision
comes clarity. And if the decision is far-reaching, if the decision has something to do
with your foundations, certainly, one is born.
Now there are many people who come to me, and they say, 'We cannot decide
whether to take the jump into sannyas or not.' They want me to tell them to take the
jump. But then they miss the whole point. If I say to you, 'Take the jump and become
a sannyasin,' you have missed an opportunity, a great opportunity, of taking a decision.
Again you have leaned on somebody else, and that is not the way a soul grows. And
this is a profound decision, of immense significance, because it is going to change
your whole life style, it is going to give you a new vision. You will be moving in a
new direction, you will not be the same again. Such far-reaching decisions one should
be capable of taking on one's own. One should risk. Only with risk, with courage, is
one born.
And whenever you take a decision, remember, if you take it then follow it; otherwise
don't take a decision, because then it is more dangerous -- more dangerous than being
indecisive. To take a decision and not to follow it will make you very very impotent.
Then it would have been better not to have decided. There are people who decide and
then never follow their decisions. Slowly slowly they lose all trust and confidence in
their being. Slowly slowly they know perfectly well that whatsoever they decide they
are not going to do. They become split; they become deceptive to themselves. When
they are taking a decision, even in that moment they know that they are not going to
follow it, because they know their past and their past experiences. Whenever they did
decide, they never followed it.
And then very small decisions can be very destructive. Just a small decision -- 'I will
not smoke from today' -- just a very ordinary decision, nothing much is involved in it...
Whether you smoke or not doesn't matter: the existence continues. In twenty years
time you may have tuberculosis, but that can be cured. Or you may die two or three
years earlier. So what? -- you never really lived.
Just the other day I was looking at a cartoon.
A man is asking a woman, 'Do you believe in life after death?' And the woman says,
'This is it!'
There is no need to believe in it, this is it. You are living such a dead life, what more
can there be after death? It will be just the same. This is what it is!
But a small decision, a very trivial decision not to smoke, and then not to follow it is
very dangerous. You will lose self-confidence. You will lose trust in your own being.
You will become mistrustful. It is better not to take such decisions. Go on smoking.
And if you decide, then you are committed. Then whatsoever happens you have to do
it. And if you can do it, you will find a clarity arising in you, a cloud disappearing,
something settling, centring, in you. A decision is tremendously significant and
meaningful.
THE DECISION MUST BE CARRIED OUT WITH A COLLECTED HEART...
That's what Lu-tsu means. If you do decide, then let your whole heart be in it. Then
make it certain that you are not going back. That's what I mean when I say again and
again to my sannyasins, 'Break the bridges.' Because you are not going back, so why
keep the bridge? Throw the ladder. Drown the boat, because you are not going back to
the old shore again. If you keep the boat safe, harboured, that means you are still
wavering, you are still thinking, 'Maybe some day I have to go back.'
Just a few months ago, Anup went to the USA, and I told him when he was going,
'Break the bridges completely now.' And he said, 'Yes, Osho.'
And now he comes, and I ask him, 'What happened? What about the bridges?' He says,
'I could not do that.'
What does that mean? He will be here only half-heartedly. He has kept the door open
to go back, he has kept every security there, safe. And the problem is: if he is not
totally here, he will not grow. And this is the vicious circle: if he does not grow, after
a few months he will think, 'It is good that I had not broken the bridges. Had I listened
to Osho and broken the bridges, I would now have been in trouble. Nothing is
happening to me here! It is good that I have saved everything there, and I can fly back
home any moment.' And he will think he has been doing the most clever, intelligent
thing. But because he has kept the bridges safe and the doors open to escape back in
the first place, he will be here only in a lukewarm way, in an indecisive way, in an
uncertain way -- wavering. And with the wavering you will not be with me. You can
be with me only if you have taken a decision with a collected heart.
And then growth IS possible. Growth IS possible only then. So see the point: if you
are totally here with me growth is possible and there will be no need to go back and
there will be no need to have bridges. But if you are not totally here with me, then the
bridges will be needed. And you will feel very intelligent -- that it was good that you
didn't listen to me. 'Now look, nothing is happening here, and I have to go back. Had I
broken all the bridges then where would I have ended?'
This is how the logical mind functions. It creates its own suicidal situations.
THE DECISION MUST BE CARRIED OUT WITH A COLLECTED HEART AND
NOT SEEKING SUCCESS; SUCCESS WILL THEN COME OF ITSELF.
And the most important thing is: if you are seeking success you are already divided.
Then your heart is not in the work, your heart is already in the result. If you are
divided, you will not succeed. Success happens only to undivided hearts who are not
worried about the consequence, the result, who are enjoying tremendously the journey
itself, and are not concerned about the goal. Only those arrive who are not concerned
with the goal at all -- because their mind is so undivided, each moment of the journey,
each step of the journey becomes a goal. Wherever they are, there is the goal. Success
comes to those people on the spiritual path who are not concerned about success at all.
If you are concerned about success, success is not going to come to you, because your
mind will be somewhere in the future and you will not be working in the present. And
success can only come if the work is totally done in the present. This moment is going
to give birth to the next moment. If this moment has been totally lived, the next
moment is bound to be of a deeper totality, of a higher quality of totality.
But people go on remaining divided. These problems you have to think about,
because these are everybody's problems.
Just a few days ago, Ashoka wrote me a letter saying that he is here but he still keeps
Satya Sai Baba's picture in his room. Now that is his room -- he can keep anybody's
picture in it -- but it is not only a question of the room. Now he will be in trouble. I
told him, 'You go to Satya Sai Baba. And there, please don't keep my picture in your
room; otherwise there also you will fail. Either be here or be there, but be with a
collected heart, an integrated heart. It is better to be with Satya Sai Baba than to be
with me if you are here only half-heartedly. But I understand his problem: I know he
will keep my picture there too. So his failure is destined.
One has to choose. One has to decide. At each step in life's journey, there are
alternative paths, and you have to choose because you cannot have all the paths and
you cannot walk on all the paths. And I am not saying what is right and wrong, I am
saying that whatsoever you choose totally is right for you. Sometimes it has happened
that if his total surrender was there, a disciple has become enlightened even with an
unenlightened Master. And thousands of times it happens that you may be with a
perfect Master and nothing happens.
It is more a question of your totality than of the perfection of the Master. Even with a
wrong person you can be transformed. Not that the wrong person can transform you,
but if your total decision is there, your total decision transforms you. That is far more
important; otherwise you can be with a Buddha and nothing will happen if you are
half-half, if you are divided. Any kind of division of the future and the present, of the
goal and the journey, this way or that, this Master or that -- any kind of division is
dangerous. Then your energy will be wasted, and you will throw the responsibility on
others.
For example, if nothing happens to Ashoka here -- and nothing is going to happen in
this way -- then, naturally, he will come to the conclusion that he has been in a wrong
place. He will not see the point that he has been a divided person, he will only see that
he has been in a wrong place, that 'This place was not for me.' But wherever you are,
if you are divided, this is going to happen again and again.
Gather courage. I know the mind wants to be clever. The mind says, 'Why not keep
both? Who knows? Keep both alternatives open. If this does not work, then that may
work.' But this is not how life functions. You want to have the cake and eat it, too. It is
impossible.
Lu-tsu says... and NOT SEEKING SUCCESS, because even that will become a
division. Be utterly herenow, with no division... SUCCESS WILL THEN COME OF
ITSELF. And when success comes of itself, it has tremendous beauty. You need not
drag it, it opens like a flower; you need not open the flower forcibly. And if you open
the flower forcibly you will have killed it. That will not be right. And you will have
opened it before its right time, and there may be no fragrance, because the flower has
to wait for the right moment to gather fragrance, to create fragrance. And when the
fragrance is ready, only then does it open of its own accord, because now it has
something to share with the existence.
One should enjoy the moment. One should be totally in the moment and forget all.
And then, one day, suddenly success has come. One day, suddenly the Golden Flower
has opened, and you are transported into a separate reality.
IN THE FIRST PERIOD OF RELEASE THERE ARE CHIEFLY TWO MISTAKES:
INDOLENCE AND DISTRACTION.
These two mistakes have to be understood. One is the mistake of the feminine mind,
the other is the mistake of the masculine mind.
The feminine mind can create indolence, laziness, because it is passive. And the
masculine mind can create distraction because it is too active. It wants to do this and
that -- and that too. It wants to rush everywhere, in all directions. The feminine mind
is passive; it wants to wait, to let things happen. But that too can be a danger if it
becomes lethargy, if it becomes laziness, if it becomes a kind of death.
Remember, passivity can be either positive or negative, just as activity can be either
positive or negative. The positive passivity means to be alert, awake, yet waiting. The
negative passivity means to be asleep, snoring, and to call it waiting.
Your lover is coming; any moment he will knock at the door. Now you can wait in
two ways. The positive waiting will be that the door is open, your eyes are fixed on
the gate, your ears are alert. Any sound -- the sound of footsteps, a knock on the door
-- even if a dead leaf flutters in the wind, and you will rush to the door. Somebody
passes by on the road, and you rush to the door -- maybe he has come. This is positive
waiting. It is beautiful. But if you lock the door, and you put the light out and you say,
'When he comes and knocks, then I will see him,' and you start snoring, this is the
negative kind of passivity, this is indolence. It is perfectly good to wait for God, but
your passivity should be alive, vibrant.
And the second is distraction: that is the quality of the male mind. The male mind is
continuously distracted. That's why the feminine mind is monogamous and the
masculine mind is polygamous, continuously distracted -- any woman that passes by,
and he becomes attracted. He forgets completely that he is already married. He forgets
completely the woman to whom he has said, 'You are my life, and I will live only for
you. You are my joy. My love is forever.' In a single moment he forgets all that
nonsense. He is distracted very easily.
The male mind is too active. Activity is good if it is positive. Positive activity means
concentrated activity, undistracted activity -- digging a well on one spot continuously.
Negative activity means digging a well here for a few moments, then in some other
place, then in some other place -- destroying the whole ground and not reaching the
water source anywhere. That's what happens to the masculine mind: he loves this
woman and that woman, and never reaches the reality of love. It remains just a
superficial phenomenon. It never becomes intimacy, it never takes depth. It never
becomes a real involvement in each other's being -- superficial contact, body-to-body
at the most, sexual. It never reaches the heart, and, certainly, never the soul. Because
to reach the heart, to reach the soul, time will be needed. One will have to wait and
dig deep.
These are the two chief possible mistakes. Beware of them. Don't become too active,
and don't become too lazy. Remain in the middle: inactively active, actively inactive.
Remain in the middle. Your action should have the quality of waiting, and your
waiting should have the quality of action. And then success is absolutely certain; you
need not think about it -- it comes of its own accord. But these mistakes can be
remedied.
BUT THAT CAN BE REMEDIED; THE HEART MUST NOT ENTER INTO THE
BREATHING TOO COMPLETELY.
Master Lu-tsu is giving you one of the most important secrets.
... THE HEART MUST NOT ENTER INTO THE BREATHING TOO
COMPLETELY.
You should learn to breathe very silently, as if there were no hurry to breathe, as if
you were indifferent to it, aloof, faraway distant. If you can be aloof, faraway and
distant to your breathing, you will be able to attain to the middle. In that moment you
will be neither masculine nor feminine. You will be both and neither, you will be
transcendental. And then both mistakes will disappear.
BREATHING COMES FROM THE HEART. WHAT COMES OUT OF THE
HEART IS BREATH. AS SOON AS THE HEART STIRS, THERE DEVELOPS
BREATH-ENERGY. BREATH-ENERGY IS ORIGINALLY TRANSFORMED
ACTIVITY OF THE HEART.
When you are distracted, watch: your breathing will be distracted too. When you are
not distracted, when you are sitting silently with no distraction, your breathing will be
cool, silent, rhythmic; it will have the quality of a subtle music. And that quality is the
exact middle, because you are not doing anything, yet you are not fast asleep. You are
neither active nor inactive you are balanced. And in that moment of balance you are
closest to reality, to God, to heaven.
WHEN OUR IDEAS GO VERY FAST THEY IMPERCEPTIBLY PASS INTO
FANTASIES WHICH ARE ALWAYS ACCOMPANIED BY THE DRAWING OF A
BREATH, BECAUSE THIS INNER AND OUTER BREATHING HANGS
TOGETHER LIKE TONE AND ECHO. DAILY WE DRAW INNUMERABLE
BREATHS AND HAVE AN EQUAL NUMBER OF FANTASIES. AND THUS THE
CLARITY OF THE SPIRIT EBBS AWAY AS WOOD DRIES OUT AND ASHES
DIE.
Remember, your each breath is not just a breath, it is a thought too, an emotion too, a
fantasy too. But this will be understood only if you watch your breathing for a few
days. When you are making love, watch your breathing. You will be surprised: your
breathing is chaotic; because sexual energy is very rough, raw energy. Sexual
fantasies are rough and raw, animalistic. There is nothing special about sexuality -every animal has it. When you are sexually aroused, you are just behaving like any
other animal in the world. And I am not saying that there is anything wrong in being
an animal, all that I am saying is just a fact. I am stating a fact. So whenever you are
in sexual love, watch your breath: it loses all balance.
Hence, in Tantra, love-making is allowed only when you have learnt how to make
love and yet keep your breath cool, rhythmic. Then a totally different quality comes to
your love-making: it becomes prayerful; then it is sacred. Now for the outsider there
will be no difference because he will see you are making love to a woman or making
love to a man, and it will be the same for the outsider. But for the insider, for those
who know, there will be great difference. In the old Tantra schools where all those
secrets were developed, experimented upon, observed, this was one of the central
focuses of their experimentation: if a man can make love without his breath being at
all affected by it, then it is no longer sex, then it is sacred. And then it will take you to
great depths of your own being; it will open doors and mysteries of life.
Your breath is not just breath, because breath is your life; it contains all that life
contains.
SO, THEN, SHOULD A MAN HAVE NO IMAGININGS IN HIS MIND? ONE
CANNOT BE WITHOUT IMAGININGS. SHOULD ONE NOT BREATHE? ONE
CANNOT BE WITHOUT BREATHING. THE BEST WAY IS TO MAKE A
MEDICINE OF THE ILLNESS.
This is the Tantra approach and this is the approach of Tao, too: TO MAKE A
MEDICINE OF THE ILLNESS. And this is something special to Tao and Tantra.
Yoga says: Avoid sex. Bypass it -- it is dangerous. But Tao and Tantra both say: Don't
avoid it. Transform its energy and then the illness itself can become the medicine.
And you can ask scientists; they are doing exactly that, particularly in allopathy.
Injections are prepared out of the illness itself, to be injected, and they become
medicinal. What allopathy has discovered recently is a very ancient discovery for
Tantra and Tao.
Anything that is God-given must have some tremendous purpose behind it. Don't
avoid it. Avoiding it, you will remain poor. Don't escape from it, because then
something will remain unlived in you. That's why the so-called yogi is continuously
tortured by sexual fantasies. He cannot sleep well -- it is impossible -- because
whatsoever he has been denying in the day comes with a vengeance in the night.
Whatsoever he has repressed in the unconscious, when he goes to sleep and the
controls are withdrawn, surfaces again; it becomes dream. The yogi, the so-called
yogi, is continuously afraid. He is afraid of seeing a woman, he is afraid of touching a
woman. He is AFRAID. And what kind of freedom is this? This fear can 't bring
freedom.
Tao and Tantra have a totally different approach. They say: Whatsoever is God-given,
transform it. It is raw material. Something of a great treasure must be hidden in it.
Sexual energy can be transformed if you can change your breathing system. Anger
can be transformed if you can change your breathing system. Just watch how you
breathe when you are angry. And the next time you feel angry, don't breathe the way
that you have always breathed whenever you were angry, and you will be surprised:
you cannot be angry either. If you don't breathe in a certain way, anger is not
supported, anger disappears. Instead of anger, compassion arises. And so disappears
sex, and instead of sex, love arises. Love is absolutely human. Sex is not just human,
it is animal, too, but no animal knows about love.
Sex is animal, love is human, prayer is divine. Sex has to be transformed into love,
and love has to be transformed into prayer.
In sex, the breathing goes chaotic. That's why I have chosen chaotic meditation for
certain purposes -- it is cathartic. Chaotic meditation, chaotic breathing hits all your
repressed anger, sex, greed, jealousies, hatred, and brings them out on the surface. It is
a great cleansing process.
In sex, the breathing is chaotic. In love, the breathing is musical. In prayer, it almost
stops.
SINCE HEART AND BREATH ARE MUTUALLY DEPENDENT, THE
CIRCULATION OF THE LIGHT MUST BE UNITED WITH THE RHYTHM OF
BREATHING.
When you breathe out, let the light go out of your eyes When you breathe in, let the
light go back inside. Make a connection between your breathing and your light
circulation. This way you will give some work to your breathing so it need not have
any other imagination. This is an imagination -- you have given something. That's
why Lu-tsu says: Man CANNOT BE WITHOUT IMAGININGS -- not in the
beginning at least. It is only at the highest peak that imagination can be dropped. But
we can use it, we can make a stepping-stone of it.
Imagine that when your breath is going out, your light is going out. When you breathe
in, your light goes in. Try it in a simple way: when you breathe out, just feel all the
light that was in being thrown out. And when you breathe in, feel all the light of the
existence entering you. And soon the imagination will become joined together with
your breathing, will be welded with breathing. So you have used imagination. And
then slowly slowly, let your breathing become calmer and quieter.
There is no need to practise any particular rhythm as they do m yoga, PRANAYAMA,
because each person has to find his own way. The body is different, the mind is
different -- your breathing cannot be alike; you will have to find your own way slowly
slowly. One thing has to be kept in mind: that it has to be made calm and quiet and
musical.
FOR THIS, LIGHT OF THE EAR IS ABOVE ALL NECESSARY.
And then Lu-tsu introduces another thing. He says: Just as light enters from the eyes
-- comes in, goes out -- it also enters from the ear -- comes in and goes out. You will
be surprised, because we don't see any light coming in and going out from the ear. But
then ask modern physics. They say that sound is nothing but electricity, a function of
electricity. Sound is electricity. That's what in the ancient language Lu-tsu is calling
light. Sound goes in and comes out from the car.
The ear is the feminine part of your body just as the eye is the masculine part of your
body. Just as the eye is extrovert, the ear is introvert. Hence, there are two kinds of
meditations in the world: either meditations concerned with eye-energy or meditations
concerned with ear-energy.
The meditations concerned with ear-energy are feminine meditations, passive -- you
have just to listen, not do anything. Listening to the birds, the wind passing through
the pine trees, or to some music, or to the noise of the traffic -- just listening, doing
nothing -- and great silence comes in, and great peace starts falling and showering on
you It is easier through the car than through the eye. It is easier through the ear
because the ear is passive, non-aggressive. It cannot do anything to existence, it can
only let it happen. The ear is a door: it allows.
THERE IS A LIGHT OF THE EYE AND A LIGHT OF THE EAR. THE LIGHT OF
THE EYE IS THE UNITED LIGHT OF THE SUN AND MOON OUTSIDE. It is
extrovert. THE LIGHT OF THE EAR IS THE UNITED SEED OF SUN AND
MOON WITHIN. It is introvert. THE SEED IS THUS THE LIGHT IN
CRYSTALLIZED FORM. BOTH HAVE THE SAME ORIGIN AND ARE
DIFFERENT ONLY IN NAME.
Light and sound are only different in name.
There are stories in India -- and possibly true stories; sooner or later science is going
to prove them right. There are stories in India that there is a certain kind of melody
that can create fire. You can put an unlit candle before the musician, and if he plays a
certain melody, a certain RAGA, suddenly the candle becomes lit. Now it looks
impossible, it looks just like a story -- maybe a myth, or maybe a metaphor -- but if
sound is electricity, then vibrations falling into a certain pattern can create it. Now
experiments are on the way. And my feeling is, sooner or later, it will be possible to
do it again scientifically.
It is a well-known fact that whenever an army passes over a bridge they are told to
break their rhythm. Ordinarily they walk in a certain rhythm: left, right, left, right, left,
right. Many times it has been observed that when the army is passing in a certain
rhythm, the bridge collapses. So now it is a well-known fact that passing over a bridge
the army has to drop its rightleft, rightleft rhythm. That certain vibe is dangerous to
the bridge.
In Canada they were experimenting with plants and their relationship with music. A
small experiment, but immensely significant. They planted the same seasonal flowers
in two places, at the same time, with same manure, the same gardener looking after
them -- everything exactly the same for both plots. But to one plot a recording of Ravi
Shankar's sitar was made available -- continuously played. And to the other plot, pop
music. And it was a very revealing phenomenon. In the plot where pop music was fed,
all the plants started moving away from the mechanism. They started leaning away
from the mechanism, as if wanting to escape, not wanting to hear it -- tired of it. And
their flowers were smaller, and they took a longer time to grow -- almost double the
time of the other plot. In the other plot where Ravi Shankar's sitar was played, the
plants started leaning towards the mechanism; they all covered the mechanism,
embracing it, hugging it. And the growth was double, the flowers were bigger, and
they came sooner than expected.
Even plants feel the difference of sound waves.
These airplanes passing by are driving humanity crazy. And the noise is growing so
much every day that if man can survive it, it will be a miracle.
BOTH HAVE THE SAME ORIGIN AND ARE DIFFERENT ONLY IN NAME.
In fact, everything is the same. It is ALL made of the stuff called light, fire, electricity
-- whatsoever name you choose. Only the forms are different.
THEREFORE, UNDERSTANDING (EAR) AND CLARITY (EYE) ARE ONE AND
THE SAME EFFECTIVE LIGHT.
Understanding comes through the ear, and clarity comes through the eye. Clarity is
masculine, understanding is feminine. Hence, I always say that a woman finds it
easier to become a disciple. A woman finds it easier to surrender, finds it easier to
understand, than a man. The man asks for logical clarity, logical conviction. The
woman asks for something else: the rhythmic conviction. The woman listens
intuitively. She feels the vibe of the person who is saying it. She does not seem very
concerned about what is being said but who is saying it, how it is being said, from
where it is arising. She goes deeper; she catches hold of the very spirit. Man remains
concerned with the letter. And because of the printing presses and the scriptures
becoming available to everybody in the form of books, a great change has happened.
Originally all the teachings were available only from the mouth of the Master. They
were transmitted orally, so the receiving centre was the ear. Now books are available.
When Krishna talked to Arjuna, Arjuna listened to it, he functioned from the car.
Great understanding happened; he was transformed. But Arjuna functioned as the
feminine.
Now you read the Gita. Reading means that it is through the eye, and the eye is not
bothered about understanding, the eye wants logical clarity. It is a totally different
approach. For centuries, all the religions of the world insisted that their scriptures
should not be written. And there was a reason for it: because once they are written,
their whole quality changes. Once they are written, the eye becomes important, and
the ear is no more important.
Listening to me is one thing, reading is totally another. When you read, you function
as male mind. When you listen, you function as female mind.
IN SITTING DOWN, AFTER LOWERING THE LIDS, ONE USES THE EYES TO
ESTABLISH A PLUMB-LINE AND THEN SHIFTS THE LIGHT DOWNWARD.
BUT IF THE TRANSPOSITION DOWNWARD IS NOT SUCCESSFUL, THEN
THE HEART IS DIRECTED TOWARDS LISTENING TO THE BREATHING. ONE
SHOULD NOT BE ABLE TO HEAR WITH THE EAR THE OUTGOING AND
INTAKING OF THE BREATH. WHAT ONE HEARS IS THAT IT HAS NO TONE.
AS SOON AS IT HAS NO TONE, THE BREATHING IS ROUGH AND
SUPERFICIAL, AND DOES NOT PENETRATE INTO THE OPEN. THEN THE
HEART MUST BE MADE QUITE LIGHT AND INSIGNIFICANT. THE MORE IT
IS RELEASED, THE LESS IT BECOMES; THE LESS IT IS, THE QUIETER.
So listen to your breathing. If you can listen to it, that means it is rough. If it has no
tone, that means it is rough. When you can only feel it and you cannot hear it, then it
is still and quiet. And that is the right way to be in tune with existence, to be in tune
with yourself, to be in tune with reality. And the quieter it is, the deeper you are.
When it stops sometimes... It does stop! It is happening to many sannyasins here.
They come and report to me, because they become very frightened: when the
breathing stops they think they are going to die.
Just the other day there was Saguna's question, that he started feeling as if he were
going to die. He became frightened. Do not become frightened. If breathing stops,
allow it, enjoy it. You are not going to die. In that very stopping of the breath you will
know the true form of reality, you will know life eternal, you will know something
that knows no death.
ALL AT ONCE IT BECOMES SO QUIET THAT IT STOPS. THEN THE TRUE
BREATHING IS MANIFESTED AND THE FORM OF THE HEART COMES TO
CONSCIOUSNESS.
If you can allow... That's why I told Saguna, 'Saguna, you fool, you missed! Don't
miss it again when it happens.'
If the breathing stops, THEN THE TRUE BREATHING IS MANIFESTED, true life
is manifested -- life that does not depend on breathing, life that is eternal, life that is
not part of the body, life that will be there even after the body has fallen into dust and
disappeared. And in that moment consciousness is attained. One becomes a Buddha.
BUDDHA means utterly conscious, awakened.
IF THE HEART IS LIGHT, THE BREATHING IS LIGHT, FOR EVERY
MOVEMENT OF THE HEART AFFECTS BREATH-ENERGY. IF BREATHING IS
LIGHT, THE HEART IS LIGHT, FOR EVERY MOVEMENT OF THE
BREATH-ENERGY AFFECTS THE HEART. IN ORDER TO STEADY THE
HEART, ONE BEGINS BY TAKING CARE OF THE BREATH-ENERGY. THE
HEART CANNOT BE INFLUENCED DIRECTLY. THEREFORE THE
BREATH-ENERGY IS USED AS A HANDLE, AND THIS IS WHAT IS CALLED
THE MAINTENANCE OF THE CONCENTRATED BREATH-ENERGY.
CHILDREN, DO YOU NOT UNDERSTAND THE NATURE OF MOVEMENT?
MOVEMENT CAN BE PRODUCED BY OUTSIDE MEANS. IT IS ONLY
ANOTHER NAME FOR MASTERY. ONE CAN MAKE THE HEART MOVE
MERELY BY RUNNING. SHOULD ONE NOT ALSO BE ABLE TO BRING IT TO
REST BY CONCENTRATED QUIETNESS? THE GREAT HOLY ONES WHO
KNEW HOW THE HEART AND BREATH-ENERGY MUTUALLY INFLUENCE
ONE ANOTHER HAVE THOUGHT OUT AN EASIER PROCEDURE IN ORDER
TO HELP POSTERITY.
You know it. If you run, the breath becomes very chaotic, it starts moving faster and
faster. Hence, the yoga postures: the full lotus posture -- sitting erect, utterly silent, as
if you have become a marble statue, with no movement -- is just the opposite of
running. It is just an outside device to help yom breathing become quiet. If yom
breathing can become fast by running, it certainly will become quiet by sitting utterly
like a Buddha statue. Sitting like a statue, with no movement in the body, certainly,
breathing becomes slower and slower and slower... and stops. In the beginning it is
only for a few moments. Don't be afraid that you are having any heart-attack or
anything. It is not a heart-attack, it is a God-attack.
'THE HEN CAN HATCH HER EGGS BECAUSE HER HEART IS ALWAYS
LISTENING.' THAT IS AN IMPORTANT MAGIC SPELL. THE HEN CAN HATCH
THE EGGS BECAUSE OF THE ENERGY OF HEAT. BUT THE ENERGY OF THE
HEAT CAN ONLY WARM THE SHELLS; IT CANNOT PENETRATE INTO THE
INTERIOR. THEREFORE SHE CONDUCTS THIS ENERGY INWARD WITH
HER HEART. THIS SHE DOES WITH HER HEARING. IN THIS WAY SHE
CONCENTRATES HER WHOLE HEART. WHEN THE HEART PENETRATES,
THE ENERGY PENETRATES, AND THE CHICK RECEIVES THE ENERGY OF
THE HEAT AND BEGINS TO LIVE. THEREFORE A HEN, EVEN WHEN AT
TIMES SHE LEAVES HER EGGS, ALWAYS HAS THE ATTITUDE OF
LISTENING WITH BENT EAR. THUS THE CONCENTRATION OF THE SPIRIT
IS NOT INTERRUPTED.
This is not only so with a hen, this is so with every woman, every mother, even the
human mother. There may be a thunderstorm and she will not hear it and she will not
be awakened from her sleep. But let her child just start crying, or just start moving,
and she will be awakened immediately as if her ears were continuously focused on the
child. The train will pass by and she will not be awakened. The aeroplane will pass
and she will not be awakened. But let the child show a slight restlessness and she is
immediately alert. Her whole ears are listening to the child. She is connected
heart-to-heart with the child from the ear. She is constantly listening as if she could
hear the very heartbeat of the child.
And this is the way for all meditators to be connected with the ear -- so deeply that
you can hear your breathing, your heartbeat. In the beginning you will be able to hear
it because it is chaotic. But if you go on listening, listening, listening, just the very
effort to listen makes it quieter. And when your listening is profound, you have -become skillful, and you know how to be aware, all tone, all sound disappears, and
there are moments when breathing stops. And those are the great moments of ecstasy,
insight, SATORI, SAMADHI.
BECAUSE THE CONCENTRATION OF THE SPIRIT SUFFERS NO
INTERRUPTION, NEITHER DOES THE ENERGY OF HEAT SUFFER
INTERRUPTION DAY OR NIGHT, AND THE SPIRIT AWAKENS TO LIFE. THE
AWAKENING OF THE SPIRIT IS ACCOMPLISHED BECAUSE THE HEART
HAS FIRST DIED.
That's why I said that if in meditation you suddenly feel your heart is dying, don't
think it is a heart-attack. When the breathing stops, you will feel as if the heart is
dying. It is not dying, it is giving birth to your real heart.
WHEN A MAN CAN LET HIS HEART DIE, THEN THE PRIMAL SPIRIT WAKES
TO LIFE. TO KILL THE HEART DOES NOT MEAN TO LET IT DRY AND
WITHER AWAY, BUT IT MEANS THAT IT HAS BECOME UNDIVIDED AND
GATHERED INTO ONE.
This is the secret of the Golden Flower: if the heart can die, the flower will bloom.
Die as you are, so you can be reborn. Jesus says, 'Unless a man is born again, he will
not enter into my kingdom of God.'
The Secret of Secrets, Vol 1
Chapter #14
Chapter title: The New Man
24 August 1978 am in Buddha Hall
Archive code:
7808240
ShortTitle:
SOS114
Audio: Yes
Video:
No
Length: 106 mins
The first question:
Question 1
OSHO, WHAT ACCORDING TO YOU IS THE MOST SIGNIFICANT THING
THAT IS HAPPENING TODAY IN THE WORLD?
A new man is emerging. The image of the new man is not yet clear, but the horizon is
becoming red and the sun will soon be there. The morning mist is there and the image
of the new man is vague, but still a few things are very crystal clear about the new
man.
And this is of tremendous importance because since the monkey became man, man
has remained the same. A great revolution is on the way. It will be far more
deep-going than the revolution that happened when monkeys started walking on the
earth and became human beings. That change created mind, that change brought
psychology in. Now another far more significant change is going to happen that will
bring the soul in, and man will not only be a psychological being but a spiritual being
too.
You are living in one of the most alive times ever.
The new man has already arrived in fragments, but only in fragments. And the new
man has been arriving for centuries, but only here and there. That's how things happen.
When the spring comes it starts with one flower. But when the one flower is there,
then one can be certain: that spring is not faraway -- it has come. The first flower has
heralded its coming: Zarathustra, Krishna, Lao Tzu, Buddha, Jesus -- these were the
first flowers. Now the new man is going to be born on a greater scale.
According to me, this new consciousness is the most important thing that is
happening today. I would like to tell you something about this new consciousness, its
orientations, and its characteristics, because you are to help it come out of the womb
-- because you HAVE TO BE IT. The new man cannot come from nowhere, he has to
come through you. The new man can only be born through your womb. You have to
become the womb.
Sannyas is an experiment to clean the ground so that new seeds can fall in. If you
understand the meaning of the new man, you will be able to understand the
significance of sannyas too. And it is because sannyas is concerned with the new man
that the old orthodoxies of all kinds are going to be against me and against sannyas,
because this will be their end. If sannyas succeeds, if the new man succeeds, the old
will have to go. The old can live only if the new man is prevented from coming.
It cannot be prevented now, because it is not only a question of the new man's coming
into existence, it is a question of the survival of the whole earth, of consciousness
itself, of life itself. It is a question of life and death. The old man has come to utter
destructiveness. The old man has reached the end of his tether. Now there is no life
possible with the old concept of man but only death. The old man is preparing for a
global suicide. The old man is piling up atom bombs, hydrogen bombs, in order to
commit a collective suicide. This is a very unconscious desire. Rather than allowing
the new man to be, the old man would like to destroy the whole thing.
You have to understand, you have to protect the new, because the new carries the
whole future with it. And man has come to a stage where a great quantum leap is
possible.
The old man was other-worldly, the old man was against this world. The old man was
always looking to the heavens. The old man was more concerned with life after death
than life before death. The new man's concern will be life before death. The new
man's concern will be THIS life, because if this life is taken care of, the other will
follow of its own accord. One need not worry about it, one need not think about it.
The old man was too concerned with God. That concern was out of fear. The new man
will not be concerned with God, but will live and love this world, and out of that love
he will experience the existence of God. The old man was speculative, the new man is
going to be existential.
The old man can be defined in the Upanishadic statement: NETI-NETI, not this, not
this. The old man was negative -- life-negative, life-denying. The new man will be
life-affirming: ITI-ITI, this and this. The old man's concern was THAT, the new man's
concern will be this, because out of this that is born, and if you become too concerned
with that, you miss both.
Tomorrow is in the womb of today. Take care of today and you have taken care of
tomorrow. There is no need to be in any way worried about tomorrow. If you become
too worried about tomorrow you have missed today. And tomorrow will come as
today -- it always comes as today. If you have learned this suicidal habit of missing
today, you will miss tomorrow also. You will go on missing. The old man was
continuously missing, was miserable, sad. And because he was sad he was against the
world, he blamed the world, he blamed SAMSARA. He said, 'It is because of the
world that I am in misery.' It is not so. The world is immensely beautiful, it is all
beauty, bliss and benediction. There is nothing wrong with the world. Something was
wrong with the old mind. The old mind was either past-oriented or future-oriented,
which are not really different orientations.
The old mind was concerned with that which is not. The new man will be utterly in
tune with that which is, because it is God, it is reality: iti-iti, this is it. This moment
has to be lived in its totality. This moment has to be lived in its spontaneity, with no A
PRIORI ideas. The old man was carrying ready-made answers. He was stuffed with
philosophy, religion and all kinds of nonsense.
The new man is going to live life without any A PRIORI conclusion about it. Without
any conclusion one has to face existence, and then one knows what it is. If you have
already concluded, your conclusion will become a barrier. It will not allow you
inquiry -- your conclusion will become a blindfold. It will not allow you to see the
truth -- your investment will be in the conclusion. You will distort reality to fit your
conclusion. That's what has been done up to now.
The new man will not be Hindu, will not be Mohammedan, will not be Christian, will
not be communist. The new man will not know all these 'isms'. The new man will
simply be an opening, a window to reality. He will allow reality as it is. He will not
project his own mind upon it. He will not use reality as a screen. His eyes will be
available; they will not be full of ideas.
The new man will not live out of belief, he will simply live. And remember, only
those who can simply live, without belief, come to know what truth is. The believer or
the disbeliever never come to know what truth is. Their beliefs are too heavy on their
minds. They are surrounded too much by their belief systems. The new man will not
know any belief system. He will watch, he will observe, he will see, he will live, and
he will allow all kinds of experiences. He will be available, he will be multi
dimensional. He will not carry scriptures in his head, he will carry only alertness
awareness. He will be meditative.
The old man lived out of fear -- even his God was nothing but a creation out of fear.
His temples, mosques, GURUDWARAS, churches -- they were all out of fear. He was
trembling, he was afraid. The new man will live out of love, not out of fear, because
fear serves death, love serves life. And if you live out of fear you will never know
what life is, you will only know death again and again. And remember, the person
who lives out of fear creates all kinds of situations in which he has to feel more and
more fear. Yom fear creates situations, just as your love creates situations.
If you love, you will find so many occasions to be loving. If you are afraid, you will
find so many occasions to be afraid.
Love is going to be the taste of the new consciousness. Because fear was the taste of
the old consciousness it created wars. In three thousand years man has fought five
thousand wars -- as if we have not been doing anything else -- continuous fighting
somewhere or other. This is a very mad state of affairs. Humanity's past is insane.
The new man will become discontinuous with this insane past. He will believe in love,
not in war. He will believe in life, not in death. He will be creative, not destructive.
His science, his art -- all will serve creativity. He will not create bombs. He will not be
political, because politics is out of hatred. Politics is rooted in fear, hate,
destructiveness. The new man will not be political. The new man will not be national,
the new man will be global. He will not have any political ambition, because it is
stupid to have political ambition. The new man is going to be very intelligent. The
first signs of that intelligence are rising on the horizon. Those who have eyes -- they
can see it. The children are rebelling.
It is a great moment of rejoicing that all over the world young people are rebelling
against all kinds of orthodoxies -- whether the orthodoxy is that of church or state
doesn't matter. They are not ready to obey -- not that they have determined to disobey,
they are not determined to disobey either. They will meditate, and if they feel like
obeying they will obey. If they feel like disobeying, they will disobey. They have no
fixed ideology. 'My country right or wrong' -- such stupid statements they cannot
make. Sometimes it is wrong, sometimes it is right. When it is right, the new man will
support it. When it is wrong... Whether it is one's own country or not will not matter.
It may be one's own family, one's own father, mother, but if it is wrong, it is wrong.
The new man will live not out of prejudices but out of spontaneous responsibility. The
old man was a slave, the new man will be free, the new man will have freedom at the
very core of his being.
The old man was very serious, the old man was a 'workoholic'. The new man will be
playful -- HOMO LUDENS. He will believe in enjoying life. He will drop words like
'duty', 'sacrifice'. He will not sacrifice for anything. He will not be a victim to any
altar -- that of the state or of the religion, of the priest or of the politician. He will not
allow anybody to exploit his life -- 'Go and die because your country is at war.'
His commitment is towards life, his commitment is not towards anything else. He
wants to live in joy, he wants to rejoice in all the gifts of God, he wants to celebrate.
Alleluia will be his only mantra.
Jesus says, 'Rejoice, rejoice. I say unto you rejoice.'
Man has not rejoiced yet. Man has lived under a great burden of seriousness: Work for
the country. Work for the family. Work for the wife. Work for the children. Work for
your father and mother. Just go on working and working and then one day die and
disappear into the grave. And then others will work. And it goes on and on. Nobody
seems to have any time to enjoy life.
And I am not saying that the new man will not work. He will work, but that will not
be his addiction. He will not be a 'workoholic', it will not be a drug, he will work
because he needs a few things, but he will not continuously work for more and more.
He will not be accumulative. He will not believe in having a big bank balance, and he
will not believe in having a very high post; rather, he will want to sing a song, to play
on the flute, on the guitar, to dance. He will not want to become famous, he will want
to live, authentically live. He will be ready to be a nobody.
And that is already happening. The first rays are already available. It is still hidden in
the morning mist, but if you search you will find it. The new children, the new
generation, are a totally different kind of generation, hence the generation gap. It is
very real. It has never been so -- never before has there been any generation gap. This
is the first time in the whole of human history that there is a gap. The children are
speaking a different language from their parents. The parents cannot understand
because the parents want them to succeed. And the children say, 'But what is the point
of success if you cannot sing a song, and you cannot dance, and you cannot enjoy, and
you cannot love? What is the point of being successful? Why? What is going to
happen through success? Even if the whole world knows my name, what is that going
to give me?'
The old generation believes in money. And you will be surprised that the belief in
money is so deep that even those who renounce money -- they also believe in money;
otherwise there is no need to renounce it. And those who praise renunciation -- they
also believe in money. The more money you renounce, the greater you are. So the
measurement is of money. Money remains the criterion. In the world if you have more
money you are great. And even in the world of the monks: 'How much have you
renounced?' If you have renounced more money, then you are more important. Money
remains important even there.
The new generation is not going to be money-manic. And remember, I am not saying
it is going to be against money, it WILL USE money. In the past money has used man,
in the past man has lived in such an unconscious way that he thought he possessed
things, but things possessed him. The new man will be able to use things. The new
man will use money, will use technology, but the new man will remain the master. He
is not going to become a victim, an instrument. This, according to me, is the greatest
thing that is happening.
A few characteristics. The new consciousness is going to be Counter to all
orthodoxies. Any kind of orthodoxy, Catholic or communist, Hindu or Jaina -- any
kind of orthodoxy -- is a kind of paralysis of the mind. It paralyzes. You stop living. It
becomes a rigidity around you. You become a fanatic, you become stubborn. You
become rock-like. You don't behave like a liquid human being, you start behaving like
a mule. That's why for Morarji Desai I have another name: Mulish-jibhai Desai. One
starts behaving in a mulish way, stubborn, dead set, no possibility of changing, no
flexibility, no fluidity. But in the past that has been praised very much: people call it
consistency, certainty. It is not. It is neither consistency nor certainty; it is simply
deadness.
An alive person has to remain flowing. He has to respond to the changing situations.
And situations are continuously changing. How can you remain fixed in your attitudes
when life itself is not fixed? When life is a river how can you remain stubborn? And if
you remain stubborn you lose contact with life -- you are already in your grave.
The new consciousness will be non-orthodox, non-fanatic; it will be fluid. It will not
react, it will respond. And the difference between these two words is great.
Reaction is always rigid. You have a fixed idea, you react out of it. Before the
question is raised, the answer is ready. Response is totally different. You listen to the
question, you absorb the question, you see the situation, you feel the situation, you
live the situation, and out of that very living your response arises. A responsible man
cannot be stubborn, cannot be certain, cannot be rigid. He will have to live moment to
moment. He cannot decide beforehand, he will have to decide every day, each
moment. And because he has to move continuously with life and its changing
challenges, he cannot be consistent in the old sense. His consistency will be only one:
that he will always be in tune with life. That will be his consistency -- not that he has
a certain idea and he remains consistent with that idea and goes on sacrificing life for
it.
There was a case against Mulla Nasrudin in the court and the magistrate asked him,
'Mulla, how old are you?'
He said, 'Forty.'
The magistrate said, 'But this is strange. You surprise me, because five years ago you
were in court, and that time also you said forty.'
Mulla said, 'Yes, I am a consistent man. Once I have said something, you can believe
me. I will never say anything else.'
This is one type of consistency.
The new man will find it ridiculous. But the old man has been consistent in this way:
in his character, in his statements, in his hypocrisy. The old man used to decide once
and for all. Psychologists say that almost fifty percent of your life is decided by the
time you are seven years old -- fifty percent! -- and then you remain consistent with it.
And life goes on changing -- no wonder that you are left behind, that you start
dragging, that you lose joy, that you lose the quality of dance. How can you dance?
you are so far behind life. You are dead wood, you don't grow. An alive tree grows,
changes; as the season changes, the tree changes. An alive person grows, and to the
very moment of death he continuously goes on growing. He never knows any end to
his growth.
Psychologists say the average mental age of man is thirteen. This is the situation. This
is how the old man has lived up to now. A thirteen-year mental age means: at the age
of thirteen people have stopped growing. Yes, they go on growing old, but they don't
grow up. Growing old is one thing, growing up is totally different. Growing old is a
physiological phenomenon; growing up means maturity, wisdom. And only those who
go on flowing with life grow up.
The new man will not be obedient to stupid ideas that have been given from the past.
And they may not have been stupid when they were born, they may have been
relevant in those circumstances; but as circumstances change, things become stupid. If
you carry them, if you go on persisting in your old fixed routines, you start behaving
in an absurd way.
Now, look. Some religion is five thousand years old. That means five thousand years
ago its rituals were born and since then they have remained fixed. How dangerous it is!
How crippling! How can man be alive if these five-thousand-year-old rituals surround
his soul?
The new man will be creative. Each moment he will find his religion, each moment he
will find his philosophy. And everything will remain growing. He will not be obedient
to the past, he cannot be -- to be obedient to the past is to be obedient to death,
because the past is dead; he will be obedient to the present. And in being obedient to
the present, he will be rebellious against the past.
To be rebellious is going to be one of his most prominent characteristics. And because
he will be rebellious he will not fit in with a dead society, he will not fit in with a dead
church, he will not fit in with a dead army. He will not fit anywhere where obedience
is a basic requirement.
The new man is bound to create a new society around himself.
First consciousness becomes new, then society becomes new. There is going to be a
long period in which the old will resist the new, will fight with the new, will try to
destroy the new. But the old cannot succeed -- time, the spirit of time, will not be in
its favour. The old has to die. Just as the old body dies and makes space for some new
child, so old societies, old orthodoxies, have to die. They have already lived overtime.
They have lived too long!
The new consciousness will not be moralistic, will not be puritan; not that it will not
have any morality, but it will have a different kind of morality -- a morality that arises
out of one's own feeling for life, one's sensitivity, one's own experiences -- not a
morality learned from others, borrowed. The new man will not be a man of character
in the old sense, because all character is binding. It creates an armour around you. The
new man will be characterless in the sense that he will not have any armour. The new
man will be characterless in the sense that he will not have a prison cell around him.
Not that he will not have character, but he will give a new definition to character. He
will not be a hypocrite.
The old puritanism, the old moralistic attitudes have created hypocrisy in the world;
they have made man schizophrenic: on the surface one thing, deep within something
else -- almost the opposite. The old man lived a double life. The new man is going to
live in a unitary way. He will live a single life. Whatsoever is inside him will also be
his outside. He will be authentic. Remember this word 'authenticity' -- that is going to
be the new man's religion. That is going to be the new man's truth, his temple, his God
-- authenticity. And with authenticity neurosis disappears. The old man was neurotic
because he was constantly in conflict: he wanted to do one thing and he was always
doing something else, because something else was required. He was taught to do
something against himself; he was repressive. His own authenticity was repressed,
and on top of it a bogus character was imposed.
We have praised these phony people too long. Now the time has come -- their
phoniness should be exposed. We have praised these mahatmas and saints so long,
now we have to see their neurosis. They were all psychologically ill, they were
pathological. A healthy person is a whole person. His inside and his outside are the
same. If he loves, he loves passionately. If he is angry, he is angry passionately. His
anger has truth in it as much as his love has truth in it. The old man boils within and
smiles on the outside. He lives without passion, without energy. He lives without any
flame. His whole life is an exercise in phoniness and, naturally, he suffers. A long
futile story is all that his life is '... a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
signifying nothing.'
The new man will not be a tale told by an idiot, but will be a poem sung out of
wholeness, will be a dance of immense joy for God's gift of life and being, for the
flowers and the trees and the birds, and the sun and the sand and the sea.
The new man will not look somewhere faraway for God, he will look here, close-by.
Now will be his only time, here will be his only space.
The new man will be earthly. And by 'earthly' I don't mean materialistic. The new man
will be a realist. He will love this earth. Because we have not loved this earth and our
so-called religions have been teaching us to hate this earth, we have destroyed it. It is
a beautiful planet, one of the most beautiful, because one of the most alive. This
planet has to be loved, this planet has to be rejoiced in. It is a gift. This body has so
many mysteries in it that even a Buddha is possible only because of this body. This
body becomes the temple of the greatest possibility: Buddhahood, nirvana. This body
has to be loved. This earth has to be loved.
The new man will find his religion in nature -- not in dead stone statues, but in living
dancing trees in the wind. He will find his religion surfing on the sea, climbing on the
virgin mountain. He will find his prayer with the snow, with the moon, with the stars.
He will be in dialogue with existence as it is. He will not live with abstract ideas, he
will live with realities. His commitment will be to nature, and through that
commitment he will come to know super-nature. God is hidden here in this earth, in
this very body. This very body, the Buddha. This very earth, the paradise.
The new man will read the scripture of nature. This will be his Veda, his Koran, his
Bible. Here he will find sermons in the stones. He will try to decipher the mysteries of
life, he will not try to demystify life. He will try to love those mysteries, to enter in
those mysteries. He will be a poet, he will not be a philosopher. He will be an artist,
he will not be a theologian. His science will also have a different tone. His science
will be that of Tao, not an effort to conquer nature, because that effort is just foolish.
How can you conquer nature? -- you are part of nature. His science will be of
understanding nature, not of conquering nature. He will not rape nature, he will love
and persuade nature to reveal its secrets.
The new man will not be ambitious, will not be political.
Politics has no future; politics has existed because of the neurosis of humankind. Once
the neurosis disappears, politics will disappear.
Ambition simply means you are missing something and you are consoling yourself
that you will get it in the future. Ambition is a consolation. Today it is all misery,
tomorrow there will be joy. Looking at tomorrow you become capable of tolerating
today and its misery: today is always hell, tomorrow is heaven. You keep on looking
at heaven, you keep on hoping.
But that hope is not going to be fulfilled ever because tomorrow never comes.
Ambition means you are incapable of transforming your today into a beatitude; you
are impotent. Only impotent people are ambitious: they seek money, they seek power.
Only impotent people seek power and money. The potential person lives. If money
comes his way, he lives the money too, but he does not seek it, he is not after it. He is
not afraid of it either.
The old man was either after money or afraid of money, either after power or afraid of
power; but in both ways his whole focus was on power and money. He was ambitious.
The old man is pitiable. He was ambitious because he was unable to live, unable to
love. The new man will be able to live and able to love. And his herenow is going to
be so beautiful, why should he be worried about tomorrow? His concern will not be
with having more, his concern will be with BEING more -- another very important
distinction to be remembered. His concern will be with being more, not having more.
Having more is just a substitute for being more. You have more money, so you think
you are more. You have more power, so you think you are more. Deep down you
remain the same beggar.
Alexander dies as empty-handed as any beggar.
Being more is a totally different dimension. Being more means getting in touch with
your reality, getting in tune with your being, and helping yourself to fall in harmony
with the universe. To be in harmony with the universe you become more. The more
you are in tune with existence, the more you are. If the harmony is total, you are a god.
That's why we call Buddha a god, Mahavira a god -- utter total harmony with
existence, no conflict at all. They have dissolved themselves into the whole, they have
become the whole -- just as a dewdrop disappears into the ocean and becomes the
ocean. They have died in their egos, now they live as existence itself.
The new man will have no use for sham, facade or pretense, he will be true, because
only through truth is there liberation. All lies create bondages. Tell a single lie and you
will have to tell a thousand and one to defend it -- you will have to tell lies AD
NAT(SEAM. Then there is no end to it. A single lie sooner or later will spread all over
your being. It is like cancer.
Be truthful and you need not hide, you can be open. Be truthful and you need not
protect yourself against existence, you can be vulnerable. In that vulnerability
existence penetrates you, God reaches your heart.
Tell a lie and you are afraid. You will be afraid of God too, you will be afraid of
facing him. You will be afraid of facing yourself. You will be continuously escaping
from yourself, from others, from God. You will be constantly hiding behind your
pretensions. Hypocrisy will become your life style, and that's where hell exists.
Hypocrisy creates hell. Authenticity is the only joy -- the ONLY joy, I say. And if you
are not authentic you will never be joyous.
The new consciousness will not put up with double-talk. The new consciousness will
hate this kind of thing with a passion. This hatred for phoniness is the deepest mark of
the new man. The new man will be opposed to structured, inflexible and infallible
systems, because life is a beautiful flow. It is not structured, it is freedom. It is not a
prison, it is a temple. He will want organizations to be fluid, changing, adapting and
human. Our states are inhuman, our armies are inhuman, our churches are inhuman.
They dehumanize man. They reduce man into a thing because they don't respect man's
freedom. The new man will respect his freedom and respect others' freedom, too.
The old man is constantly interfering, poking his nose into everybody's affairs, trying
to manipulate, criticizing, condemning, rewarding, punishing. The old man is
continuously concerned with others: 'What are you doing?'
I was staying in Bombay once. A Parsee woman came to me because just the day
before I had criticized Satya Sai Baba and had called him a phony guru. She came to
see me and she said, 'I have come to tell you a few more things.' She was thinking that
I would be very happy because she had brought some information against Satya Sai
Baba. She said, 'He is a homosexual. And I know it from reliable sources.'
I said, 'But why should you be concerned? Homosexual or heterosexual -- that is his
business. It is his life. Who are you? Why should you be bothered about it?'
She was very shocked when I said that. She had come feeling that I would be very
grateful to her, because she was giving me such great information.
Why should you be concerned? Can't you leave people to their own life? I criticize
only when the other's life is concerned; otherwise there is no question of criticism.
What Satya Sai Baba is doing with his sexuality is his business, it is nobody else's
business.
But the old woman was constantly poking her nose into everybody's affairs.
It happens here every day. The old kind of people come and they are very much in
agony because some man is holding some woman's hand. Why? -- he is not holding
your hand. And if those two persons have decided to hold hands, they have absolute
freedom to do that. And if they are enjoying, who are you to interfere? If the man is
holding some woman's hand against her will, then maybe your help is needed; but if
they both are willing then you should not be concerned at all.
But this is the old consciousness. It is always trying to find ways and means to
manipulate others, to be dominant over others.
The new consciousness will leave everyone to his own life. Unless somebody is
harming others, he should not be prevented. Unless somebody is a danger to others,
he should not be prevented. Unless somebody is interfering in somebody else's
freedom, he should not be interfered with.
The old world remained without individuality. It hated individuality, it liked only
sheep, crowds -- people behaving in the same way with everybody following the same
routine and the same structure. The new man will allow all kinds of possibilities. The
new man will love liquid structures. He will be human, he will respect human beings.
His respect will be almost religious.
The new man will have to find new forms of community, of closeness, of intimacy, of
shared purpose, because the old society is not going to disappear immediately. It will
linger, it will put up all kinds of fight to the new society -- as it always happens. It has
so many vested interests, it cannot go easily. It will go only when it becomes
impossible for it to remain in existence.
Before it goes the new man will have to create new kinds of communes, new kinds of
families, new communities of closeness, intimacy, shared purpose.
That's why I am trying to create a small commune where you can be totally yourself --
away from the structured and the rotten world -- and you can be given absolute
freedom. It will be an experiment, because the future is going to move on those lines.
It will be a small experiment but of immense significance.
The new consciousness will not have anything to do with institutions like marriage.
The new man will have a natural distrust of marriage as an institution. A man-woman
relationship has deep value for him only when it is a mutually enhancing, growing,
flowing relationship. He will have little regard for marriage as a ceremony or for
vows of permanence which prove to be highly impermanent. He will love the moment
and live it in its totality.
Marriage has no future. Love has a future.
In the past love was not a reality, marriage was a reality. In the future love is going to
be the reality and marriage is going to become more and more unreal. In the past
people were married to each other, hence by and by they started liking and loving. In
the future people will love and like each other, only then will they live together. In the
past to live together came first and, naturally, when you live together, a liking arises, a
dependence arises. It was a need phenomenon. The husband needed the wife, the wife
needed the husband, and then the children needed the parents to be together. It was,
more or less, an economic phenomenon; but it was not out of love.
The future will know a different kind of relationship which is based purely on love
and which will remain in existence only while love remains. And there will be no
hankering for its permanence, because in life nothing is permanent; only plastic
flowers are permanent.
Real roses are born in the morning and are gone by the evening. And that is their
beauty: they are beautiful when they come, and they are beautiful when their petals
start withering away. Their life is beautiful, their birth is beautiful, their death is
beautiful, because there is aliveness. A plastic flower is never born, never lives, never
dies.
Marriage has been a plastic flower in the past. The new consciousness can have no
respect for marriage. It will have to create a new kind of intimacy -- friendship. And it
will have to learn to live with the impermanent phenomenon of love and of
everything.
It needs guts to live with the impermanence of life, because each time something
changes you have to change yourself again. One wants to remain fixed -- it seems
safer, more secure. That's how the old man has lived. The old man was not
adventurous; his whole concern was security. The new man will have the spirit of
adventure; his concern will not be security, his concern will be ecstasy.
He will not believe, because belief is a search for security, he will explore. He may
not have neat answers to every question, but he will accept every challenge to inquire,
to explore. He will go as far as life can take him, he will try to reach to the stars; but
he will remain open. He will not start with a belief, with a conclusion, he will start
only with a quest, a question. To start with a belief is not to start at all. To start with a
belief is just playing a game with yourself. You have already believed, how can you
explore? To explore one has to be agnostic. And that is going to be the religion of the
future: agnosticism.
One will be capable and courageous enough to say, 'I don't know, but I am interested
in knowing. And I am ready to go into any dimension, into any adventure.' The new
man will be ready to risk. The old man was very businesslike, never ready to risk.
Risk was anathema; security was his goal. But with security you start dying. It is only
in adventure, continuous adventure, that life grows to higher and higher plenitudes,
that it reaches to the Himalayan peaks.
The new person will be a spontaneous person, unpredictable, willing to risk newness,
often willing to risk saying or doing the wild, the far-out thing. He will believe that
everything is possible and anything can be tried. He will not cling to the known, he
will always remain available to the unknown, even to the unknowable. And he will
not sacrifice for any future because he will not be an idealist. He will not sacrifice for
any abstract ideas, ideals, ideologies.
He will have a trust in his own experience and a profound distrust of all external
authority. The new man will trust only his own experience. Unless he knows
something he will not trust it. No external authority can help the new man. Nobody
can say, 'I say so, so you have to believe. Because we have always believed, so you
have to believe. Because our forefathers believed, so you have to believe. Because it
is written in the Vedas and the Bible, you have to believe.' The new man is not going
to have anything to do with such nonsense, the new man will believe only if HE
knows.
This is real trust -- trust in one's own possibilities, one's own potential. The new man
will respect himself. To believe in external authorities is disrespectful towards one's
own being.
And, finally, the new man will like being close to elemental nature: to the sea, the sun,
the snow; flowers, animals, birds; to life, growth, death.
This, according to me, is the most important phenomenon that is happening today. A
new man is coming into existence. The first rays are already on the horizon. Prepare
yourself to receive the new man. Get ready. Become a host to the guest who is just
about to knock on your doors at any moment. And that's what sannyas is all about: a
preparation -- getting ready to receive the new man.
It is going to be a great adventure to receive the new man. It is going to be risky, too,
because the old will not like it.
Now you can understand why the orthodox mind is against me. I am preparing their
graveyard, and I am preparing for something new. I am preparing a garden for the new.
You are to open your hearts for the new. Uproot all the weeds of the old, drop all the
conditionings that the old has given to you, so you can receive the new.
And remember, the days of the messiahs are over. Don't wait for Christ's coming
again, and don't wait for Buddha's coming again. Nobody comes again, at least not
Buddha and Christ. Those who come again are the people who live without learning
anything from life. Buddha has learned the lesson; he will not be coming again. Christ
has learned the lesson; he will not be coming again. Don't wait for any messiah to
come; wait for a new consciousness, not for a messiah to deliver you. That is what the
old man used to believe -- somebody will come. Hindus think Krishna will come:
'When things are really dark and difficult and dismal, Krishna will come and deliver
us.' All nonsense! All holy cowdung!
A new consciousness is going to deliver you, not some person -- Buddha, Krishna,
Christ. They were here and they could not deliver you. No single person can do it -- it
is impossible. Only a new consciousness can deliver man from his bondage. And the
new consciousness can come only through you. You have to become the womb, you
have to accept it, receive it, prepare yourself for it.
Sannyas is nothing but getting ready for something immensely valuable, so that when
the gift comes you are not fast asleep, so that when the new consciousness knocks on
your door you are ready to embrace it.
The second question:
BELOVED OSHO,
Question 2
OH THAT I COULD HAVE DIED OF THE SHAME THAT YOU'VE BEEN
NAUSEATED BY ME...
THANK YOU FOR SUCH A DRASTIC REASON TO GIVE UP
NON-VEGETARIAN HABITS. IT HASN'T ARISEN OUT OF MY OWN
AWARENESS YET AND I SUSPECT THIS WAS MY CONDITIONING. MY
CHILDHOOD WAS RULED BY JEWISH DIETARY LAWS AND RITUALS -THERE WERE SO MANY FOODS FORBIDDEN BY MY FATHER, FORBIDDEN
BY HIS FATHERS FOR THE SO-CALLED CHOSEN PEOPLE.
MAYBE AN EXTERNAL, NON-EXISTENTIAL MORALITY IMPOSED ON MY
EARLY YEARS BLUNTED MY SENSITIVITY?
BUT NOW IT HURTS SO MUCH TO HAVE NAUSEATED YOU. THIS DECISION
AND A SMALL LIGHT FILL ME.
Pradeepa, it is not that you nauseated me, something in you... And, of course, you are
unconscious, that is why I have been so drastic and hard on you -- so that you can
become conscious of it. Just a habit.... And when a person is born in a non-vegetarian
family it is natural to learn the ways of the family, just as vegetarians learn the ways
of a vegetarian family. Both are unconscious. And I don't give any value to the
unconscious vegetarian -- he is not superior to the unconscious non-vegetarian -because both are unconscious. Only consciousness has value. If you are consciously
vegetarian then there is some value in it, otherwise there is no value.
In India there are so many vegetarians -- unconscious, just because by accident they
were taught vegetarianism in their childhood. They have learned it. You have learned,
in the same way, non-vegetarian habits. You are both alike. There is no difference -not at all -- not even the difference of an inch. Unconsciousness is unconsciousness.
What you do out of unconsciousness is a robotlike phenomenon.
I had to hit so hard on Pradeepa's head so that she could become a little more alert. I
hit you only because I love you. And remember, the more meditative you become the
more nauseating your non-vegetarian habits will become. When a new person comes
to me, a person who has not meditated, who has no intimacy with me, no love for me,
who is not close to me, his vibe is not nauseating to me. Why? -- because his whole
vibe is the same. But when a person starts meditating, starts becoming more and more
silent -- as is happening to Pradeepa, her energy is moving in beautiful dimensions -now a disparity will be felt.
It is like on white cloth just a small speck of dirt will show; on black cloth it won't
show. When your whole being is unconscious and there is no silence and all is noise,
you can be non-vegetarian. It will not make much difference, it will not show -- there
is no contrast to show it up. You can be a cannibal and it will not show. But when you
start getting clean, some space inside becomes fresh, young, natural, some part of you
becomes clear, is purified, then the dirt shows. Then even small things will show.
Pradeepa, you should be happy that I could see it so clearly that something inside you,
just out of old habit, was poisoning your whole being. You will take a great leap. Your
growth will be immensely enhanced.
I am here only to facilitate your growth, and I will do everything that I can do. If a
shock is needed, I will shock you. If you need hammering on the head, I will hammer
you. Whatsoever is needed has to be done -- nothing has to be left undone. All
possible methods have to be tried, because your entanglements with the past are deep;
there are many many sources, and they will have to be cut. Slowly slowly you will
arise out of your past completely free. That shock can become a transformation in you.
I hope that it has already changed you. And I hope that next time you come to me that
vibe will have disappeared.
But you will have to remain conscious. Old habits die hard; they persist. And
remember, you cannot deceive me. Your mind can say, 'If once in a while you eat
non-vegetarian food how is Osho going to know?' It is not so. If you do something
your whole vibe will express it: your guilt will show it, your shame will show it, your
face will show it. You will not be flowing when you are close to me -- you will be
afraid you may be caught again.
And remember, I am not against non-vegetarian foods for any other reasons. If a man
is not meditating, if a man is not trying to grow inwards, if a man is not in search of
God, then it is perfectly okay -- he can eat whatsoever he wants to eat. The higher you
are trying to reach, the more and more you will have to drop any unnecessary luggage.
Only then you can fly. This is unnecessary luggage.
But remember, it is not that you have nauseated me, it is just an unconscious habit in
you that has nauseated me. And you are not your habit. The habit can be dropped, and
you will come closer to me and you will be able to receive more of my love. And you
don't know how much I have to give to you; you only know that much which you
receive. And you receive only that much which you CAN receive. Become more and
more capable of receiving more and more. There is no end to it. This place can
become your absolute fulfilment.
The third question:
Question 3
I WANT TO SAY MANY THINGS TO YOU. SHOULD I WRITE THEM OR NOT?
Meditate on this small story.
'Have you heard, O Socrates...'
'Just a moment, friend,' said the sage. 'Have you sifted what you are going to tell me
through the three sieves?'
'The three sieves?'
'Yes, my friend. Let us see whether what you mean to tell me will stand the test. The
first of the sieves is that of truth. Have you made sure that all you are going to tell me
is true?'
'Well, no. I just heard the other say it.'
'I see. Of course, insofar as it is not even true we can scarcely bother with it -- unless
it happens to be something that will stand the test of the sieve of goodness?'
'Oh no, indeed, on the contrary... Hmm, I'm not sure he said it, and what he is
supposed to have said serves no good.'
'Perhaps it is necessary that I know this in order to prevent harm to others?'
'Well, no. If you look at it in that way...'
'Very well then,' said Socrates, 'since what you have come to tell me about the case is
neither true nor good nor needful, let us forget all about it. There are so many
worthwhile things in life that we can't afford to bother with what is so worthless as to
be neither good nor true nor needful.'
Meditate on this statement of Socrates and you will know what to write to me, what
not to write to me, what to ask, what not to ask.
There are a few people who go on writing letters every day. It is not a problem for me
-- just Amp is troubled. She has to read hundreds of letters, sometimes late into the
night. Look, she is asleep! She has to sleep sometime... Late in the night she has to go
on reading those letters and summarize them. Don't torture her!
Unless it is really important -- something valuable, something which will help you or
somebody else -- don't write. If you feel it is of some importance then certainly you
can write. And then, too, make it as short as possible, make it telegraphic. There is no
need to write long long letters. A few people are very much into writing letters -- ten
pages, twelve pages. Just write a few sentences. Just say exactly what you want to say.
And, before you say anything, ponder over this statement of Socrates -- it will help
you: Let them pass through the three sieves.
The last question:
Question 4
WHY DON'T YOU SAY EXACTLY WHAT YOUR PHILOSOPHY IS?
And what am I doing every day? Morning and evening I am continuously doing that.
But maybe you have some ideas already fixed in your mind and you would like my
philosophy to fit and adjust to those ideas. And it is not going to fit, hence you feel
puzzled, confused. I am not here really to try and give you a set doctrine, I am trying
to provoke something in you. It is not a question of giving you an exact statement of
what my philosophy is; rather, I am a challenge to provoke you into thinking, into
meditating. Something is Lying dormant in you and it has to be provoked. I am
hammering it. It is not that I have to give you a philosophy and you have to believe in
it -- then the whole point will be missed.
I am not a philosopher and I am not trying to give you a dogma in which you have to
believe. In fact, I am just doing the opposite. I am destroying all dogmas and all
philosophies -- this is my philosophy. I am trying to create a vacuum in you because
when the vacuum is there the dormant energy in you will start rising. It needs some
space to rise.
But you must be having some ideas. People come to me...
There was one Christian missionary who said, 'It will be very good if you write a
small book, a catechism, just as we Christians have done -- just a few statements of all
that you want to teach.'
I cannot give you a catechism because I have none. I respond to your potential, to
your possibilities. This way and that I provoke you. And I will go on provoking you
until you are awakened. But if you have a Christian-missionary type of mind, you will
be waiting for me to deliver you a few fixed statements so that you can believe in
them for ever and ever. I cannot do that to you because that is harmful, that is
poisonous to you. And if that mind is there, you will not be able to understand what I
am doing here; it is a totally different kind of work.
A famous film star announced that she was about to get married for the sixth time.
'Oh,' said Mulla Nasrudin. 'Against whom?'
People have their own understandings. Now Mulla's experience of marriage is such
that he can ask only one thing: 'Against whom?'
I said to Mulla Nasrudin one day, 'I hear your daughter has got married. I am sure you
found it hard to part with her.'
'Hard?' he said. 'It was almost impossible.'
People have their own deep-rooted ideas. They listen from those conclusions. He was
trying to get rid of her, he was trying hard to get rid of her. He was very worried, so
when I said, 'I am sure you found it hard to part with her,' this was his reaction:
'Hard?' he said. 'It was almost impossible.'
One day I asked Mulla Nasrudin, 'Hi, Mulla, how is your wife?'
He looked at me and said, 'Compared to what?'
You must be listening with your mind all intact. You will have to put it aside, then you
will see it is not a verbal transmission that I am making here, it is an energy
transmission. I am trying to contact you. Your mind is in between. I am trying in
every way to destroy your mind. I am taking away all your knowledge, making it look
ridiculous, absurd.
First you start feeling confused because you were so certain, and when I go on hitting
hard on your knowledge, you start feeling confused. And then problems arise. You
were thinking that you would become clear and now you are becoming confused. In
the beginning it is going to happen: certainty destroyed, you become confused. But
only when you are confused can you drop all your knowledge, not before it. When the
confusion becomes too much, maddening, one day you simply drop it. It is no longer
possible to carry it any more.
And then you will understand what I am doing here to you. I am not giving you any
philosophy, I am provoking your understanding. It is not a verbal doctrine, it is a
heart-to-heart communion, a soul-to-soul communion. I am trying to connect with you,
and in that connection a spark from my being will jump into your being and your
inside will be lit. Just a small spark is needed and there will be great light in you, and
that light will give you eyes to see, ears to hear, heart to feel. That light will make you
alive. That light will bloom in you as a Golden Flower.
The Secret of Secrets, Vol 1
Chapter #15
Chapter title: Beyond Indolence and Distraction
25 August 1978 am in Buddha Hall
Archive code:
7808250
ShortTitle:
SOS115
Audio: Yes
Video:
No
Length: 108 mins
MASTER LU-TSU SAID: THE TWO MISTAKES OF INDOLENCE AND
DISTRACTION MUST BE COMBATED BY QUIET WORK THAT IS CARRIED
ON DAILY WITHOUT INTERRUPTION; THEN SUCCESS WILL CERTAINLY
BE ACHIEVED. IF ONE IS NOT SEATED IN MEDITATION, ONE WILL OFTEN
BE DISTRACTED WITHOUT NOTICING IT. TO BECOME CONSCIOUS OF
THE DISTRACTION IS THE MECHANISM BY WHICH TO DO AWAY WITH
DISTRACTION. INDOLENCE OF WHICH MAN IS CONSCIOUS, AND
INDOLENCE OF WHICH MAN IS UNCONSCIOUS, ARE A THOUSAND MILES
APART. UNCONSCIOUS INDOLENCE IS REAL INDOLENCE; CONSCIOUS
INDOLENCE IS NOT COMPLETE INDOLENCE, BECAUSE THERE IS STILL
SOME CLARITY IN IT. DISTRACTION COMES FROM LETTING THE MIND
WANDER ABOUT; INDOLENCE COMES FROM THE MIND 'S NOT YET
BEING PURE. DISTRACTION IS MUCH EASIER TO CORRECT THAN
INDOLENCE. IT IS AS IN SICKNESS: IF ONE FEELS PAINS AND
IRRITATIONS, ONE CAN HELP THEM WITH REMEDIES, BUT INDOLENCE IS
LIKE A DISEASE THAT IS ATTENDED BY LACK OF REALIZATION.
DISTRACTION CAN BE COUNTERACTED, CONFUSION CAN BE
STRAIGHTENED OUT, BUT INDOLENCE AND LETHARGY ARE HEAVY AND
DARK. DISTRACTION AND CONFUSION AT LEAST HAVE A PLACE, BUT IN
INDOLENCE AND LETHARGY THE ANIMA ALONE IS ACTIVE. IN
DISTRACTION THE ANIMUS IS STILL PRESENT, BUT IN INDOLENCE PURE
DARKNESS RULES. IF ONE BECOMES SLEEPY DURING MEDITATION,
THAT IS AN EFFECT OF INDOLENCE. ONLY BREATHING SERVES TO
OVERCOME INDOLENCE. ALTHOUGH THE BREATH THAT FLOWS IN AND
OUT THROUGH THE NOSE IS NOT THE TRUE BREATH, THE FLOWING IN
AND OUT OF THE TRUE BREATH TAKES PLACE IN CONNECTION WITH IT.
WHILE SITTING, ONE MUST THEREFORE ALWAYS KEEP THE HEART
QUIET AND THE ENERGY CONCENTRATED. HOW CAN THE HEART BE
MADE QUIET? BY THE BREATH. ONLY THE HEART MUST BE CONSCIOUS
OF THE FLOWING IN AND OUT OF THE BREATH; IT MUST NOT BE HEARD
WITH THE EARS. IF IT IS NOT HEARD, THEN THE BREATHING IS LIGHT; IF
LIGHT, IT IS PURE. IF IT CAN BE HEARD, THEN THE BREATH-ENERGY IS
ROUGH; IF ROUGH, THEN IT IS TROUBLED; IF IT IS TROUBLED, THEN
INDOLENCE AND LETHARGY DEVELOP AND ONE WANTS TO SLEEP. THAT
IS SELF-EVIDENT.
HOW TO USE THE HEART CORRECTLY DURING BREATHING MUST BE
UNDERSTOOD. IT IS A USE WITHOUT USE. ONE SHOULD ONLY LET THE
LIGHT FALL QUITE GENTLY ON THE HEARING. THIS SENTENCE
CONTAINS A SECRET MEANING. WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO LET THE LIGHT
FALL? IT IS THE SPONTANEOUS RADIATION OF THE LIGHT OF THE EYES.
THE EYE LOOKS INWARD ONLY AND NOT OUTWARD. TO SENSE
BRIGHTNESS WITHOUT LOOKING OUTWARD MEANS TO LOOK INWARD;
IT HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH AN ACTUAL LOOKING WITHIN. WHAT
DOES HEARING MEAN? IT IS THE SPONTANEOUS HEARING OF THE LIGHT
OF THE EAR. THE EAR LISTENS INWARDLY ONLY AND DOES NOT LISTEN
TO WHAT IS OUTSIDE. TO SENSE BRIGHTNESS WITHOUT LISTENING TO
WHAT IS OUTSIDE IS TO LISTEN INWARDLY; IT HAS NOTHING TO DO
WITH ACTUALLY LISTENING TO WHAT IS WITHIN. IN THIS SORT OF
HEARING, ONE HEARS ONLY THAT THERE IS NO SOUND; IN THIS KIND OF
SETTING, ONE SEES ONLY THAT NO SHAPE IS THERE. IF THE EYE IS NOT
LOOKING OUTWARD AND THE EAR IS NOT HARKENING OUTWARD, THEY
CLOSE THEMSELVES AND ARE INCLINED TO SINK INWARD. ONLY WHEN
ONE LOOKS AND HARKENS INWARD DOES THE ORGAN NOT GO
OUTWARD NOR SINK INWARD. IN THIS WAY INDOLENCE AND LETHARGY
ARE DONE AWAY WITH. THAT IS THE UNION OF THE SEED AND THE
LIGHT OF THE SUN AND THE MOON.
IF, AS A RESULT OF INDOLENCE, ONE BECOMES SLEEPY, ONE SHOULD
STAND UP AND WALK ABOUT. WHEN THE MIND HAS BECOME CLEAR
ONE SHOULD SIT DOWN AGAIN. IN THE COURSE OF TIME THERE WILL
BE SUCCESS WITHOUT ONE'S BECOMING INDOLENT AND FALLING
ASLEEP.
ONE HOT AFTERNOON an owl was sitting in a tree and a swan flew up and sat
there too.
'Phew, it is hot, Brother Owl,' he said. 'The sun is bright and I am all hot and sweaty.'
'What!' said the owl. 'What, what are you talking about? Sun? Hot? When darkness
gathers it gets hot. What is this sun you are talking about? Are you mad or something?
What are you trying to tell me? There is no such thing as the sun. There has never
been. What is this light that gets hot? We have never heard about it. It gets hot when
darkness gathers? Are you trying to make a fool of me? And I'm not alone in saying so.
All our scriptures also say so.'
The swan was flabbergasted by all this. 'How can I explain it to this blind old owl?' he
thought.
'Look, Brother, I can see with my eyes. It is the middle of the day and the sun is
shining brightly and it is very hot. You are saying that it is dark? How can I explain it
to you?'
'Let us go then,' said the owl. 'There is a big tree over there where there are lots of
owls and great scholars too. We will ask them about it -- they know all about the
scriptures, and a few of them are very learned. Come on! We will see if you are
making a fool of me.'
They flew over and there were many many blind owls there. 'This swan has turned
up,' the owl said, 'and he says that it is the middle of the day and the sun is beating
down and that there is light everywhere and that's why it is hot. What do you people
say?'
'What is all this?' they cried. 'Our fathers and their fathers and their fathers, in fact,
nobody in the whole history of our community has ever seen a sun, so there is no such
thing as a sun. How can it be there? He is having you on. Don't listen to him. He is
either mad or a very fraudulent fellow. He is trying to corrupt our religion. We have
always lived in darkness and we have always worshipped darkness. It is the very
foundation of our way of life. He will destroy our way of life. That is the sort of
person he is. If you want, we will take a majority vote on it.'
One owl got up and said, 'What is the truth? Does darkness exist or does light?'
'Darkness, and darkness alone,' they all cried in unison. 'Why then has it got so hot?'
'Because it is so dark,' they cried. 'Heat is a function of darkness.'
'Don't let him stay here,' they all cried again. 'He will spoil our religion, our tradition,
our very cherished past. Drive him away immediately! He is either totally blind or
utterly mad.'
This small parable contains a few truths of immense value.
First: truth cannot be transferred -- there is no way to transfer it. My truth is my truth;
I can talk about it to you, but talking about it is not transferring it to you. Listening to
it is not understanding it. You will have to open your own eyes.
The function of a real Master is not to tell you that God exists but to help you to open
your eyes, to open the windows of your soul so that you can see, so that you can
realize the meaning of the word 'God' in your own bones, in your own blood, in your
very marrow. I cannot see for you through my eyes and I cannot walk for you with my
legs and I cannot fly for you with my wings. You will have to live your life and you
will have to die your death.
This is one of the most fundamental things to be always remembered; otherwise one
becomes burdened with borrowed knowledge which is not knowledge at all but a
pseudo coin: it looks like knowledge, hence it can deceive you.
And that's what has happened to humanity. Humanity is living under the curse of
borrowed knowledge. People go on reciting the Bible, the Koran, the Gita like parrots
-- blind old owls reciting the Koran, the Gita, the Bible. But this is not their own
experience, their own experience is just the opposite. Their own experience simply
denies the truth of the Gita and the Bible and the Vedas and the Dhammapada. Their
own experience simply says that 'Buddha is mad,' that 'Jesus is deceiving us,' that
'Socrates may be very clever, but beware of him, don't listen to him; he will destroy
our religion.'
Man has created a religion with his blind eyes, and not one but many religions,
because blind eyes cannot see the One, blind eyes can only believe in the many.
Hence there are so many religions -- nearabout three hundred religions on this small
earth -- and each religion proclaiming that 'My truth is the only truth,' that 'My God is
the only God,' that 'All other Gods are false,' that 'All other truths are fabrications,'
that 'All other paths only lead into wastelands -- only my path is the path to paradise.'
These three hundred religions are continuously fighting with each other. None of them
is aware, none of them has seen, none of them has looked into reality face to face.
They have believed. These religions are not religions but traditions. They have heard
-- they have heard down the ages -- and they have believed, because to believe is
cheap, to explore is risky. To repeat like a parrot is comfortable, to go into the
adventure of discovery is to risk your life. It is dangerous. Exploration is dangerous;
belief -- convenient, consoling. You need not go anywhere, it is given to you
ready-made; but it is second-hand.
And miserable is the man who lives with a second-hand God, because God can only
be first-hand. The experience has to be authentically yours; nobody else's experience
can become the foundation of a true life. Buddha may have seen, but to become a
Buddhist is not going to help. Buddha was not a Buddhist -- certainly not. Jesus may
have looked, encountered, realized, but to become a Christian is utter stupidity. Unless
you become a Christ you will never know God.
The really religious person avoids traditions, the really religious person avoids
second-hand gods, avoids beliefs, keeps him-self open, available for the truth to
happen. Certainly he works -- it is only he who does work -- the believer never works
upon himself. There is no need for the believer to work upon himself. The explorer,
the inquirer, the seeker of truth works hard upon himself because there are many
things which have to be dropped, many impurities which have to be dropped, many
hindrances and blocks which have to be dissolved. The eyes have to be opened and
the ears have to be unplugged and the heart has to be made to feel. One has to fall in
rhythm with the existence. When you are utterly in rhythm with existence your eyes
are open, and then, for the first time, you see.
And that seeing is transformation, that seeing changes you, root and all. That seeing
becomes a new vision, a new life, a new gestalt. You are no more confined then by
your body, no more confined by your mind, no more confined by anything whatever.
You are unconfined, infinite, eternal. And to feel this eternity flowing in you is to
know God. To see this infinity extending into the eternal past and into the eternal
future is to see God. To feel godliness inside your own being is to know God. This
can't be second-hand.
When I see a Christian or a Hindu or a Jaina or a Mohammedan, I see second-hand
people. You would not want to purchase second-hand shoes from the market and you
would not want to purchase second-hand clothes used by others from the market. But
for your soul you purchase second-hand beliefs, second-hand shoes, second-hand
clothes, dirty, ugly, used, rotten? And you think you are beautifying your life? You are
insulting your very soul, you are dehumanizing yourself. To become a Christian or to
become a Buddhist is to dehumanize yourself.
The search has to be alone, the search has to be authentically individual. Truth cannot
be decided by the vote of the majority because truth is utterly individual and private.
It is not an objective phenomenon. You can see my body -- it is an objective
phenomenon; whether my body exists or not can be decided easily by others. But
whether I am enlightened or not cannot be decided by anybody else -- certainly not by
any majority vote.
A Buddha is a Buddha not because people have voted for him and given their majority
vote that he is a Buddha, he is a Buddha by his own sheer declaration; except for
himself there is no witness. It is utterly private, it is so interior that nobody else can
penetrate it.
Truth cannot be decided by a majority vote. But that's how people decide. That's why
religions are so interested in increasing their numbers, because if they have more
people, certainly they have more truth. Christians can claim more truth than Jainas
because they have a big crowd behind them. If there is a voting then Christians will
win and Jainas will be defeated. But it is not a question of voting. Even if a thousand
owls vote that it is dark and there is no sun and light has never existed, even then the
lie remains a lie. A single swan is enough to declare that it is day.
Truth is not a question of democratic decision; it has nothing to do with the crowd.
Catholics are against birth control, Mohammedans are against birth control, for a
simple reason, for a political reason. The reason is that if birth control is allowed, their
population will start decreasing. And that is their only strength. They want to increase
their population so that one day they can prove to the world: 'Look, if we have so
many people on our side, it must be that truth is on our side.'
I would like to remind you of a famous statement of George Bernard Shaw.
Somebody was arguing with him and the man said, 'But so many people believe in
what I am saying. How can so many people be wrong?'
And Bernard Shaw retorted, 'If so many people believe in it then it must be wrong,
because how can so many people be right?'
See the point of it: how can so many people be in the right? The crowd is blind, the
crowd is not enlightened. Truth has always been in the minority. When Buddha arises
he is alone, when Jesus walks in Jerusalem he is alone, when Socrates fights he is
alone. Of course, when a few seekers gather together around Socrates, a school arises,
but that school is a minority. And to be with Socrates needs courage, needs guts,
because he is not there to console you. He will take all your consolations away, he
will shatter all your illusions, because that is the only way to bring you to truth. He
will force you to open your eyes; he will not sing a lullaby to help you to go to sleep.
He will shout from the house tops to wake you up. He will shock you, he will hit you.
Just the other day Pradeepa came to see me. She was crying -- naturally, I had
shocked her tremendously. She would not have ever dreamed that one day, out of
nowhere, I would just hit her exactly on the head with a hammer. And she was also
disturbed because she has been a cause of creating nausea in me -- she feels for me,
she loves me, as you all love me. She was crying for all these reasons.
But I have to tell you, and her in particular, that you should feel grateful whenever I
hit you hard, because I will hit you hard only when you are worthy of it. I will not hit
just anybody, I will hit only when somebody is really growing. The more you will be
growing the more demands will be made on you.
I have not told everybody to drop non-vegetarian food, but I have told Pradeepa in a
very shocking way to drop it. Her consciousness is growing; now this has become a
hindrance. People who are not soaring high -- they can carry as much of a burden as
they like; but those who are starting to soar high -- they have to drop all unnecessary
luggage. The more pure your energy becomes, the more you will have to be careful
about it, because something precious can be lost. And it is very difficult to create that
precious energy, it is very easy to lose it. Those who don't have anything to lose -they need not worry, they can go on doing all kinds of stupid things. Their whole
being is in tune with those stupidities.
This has to be remembered by you all: that as you will be growing I will be making
more and more demands on you.
There is a beautiful story...
India has known a great painter, one of the greatest of all -- Nandalal Bose, a genius.
He was a disciple of another genius, Avanindranath Tagore. Avanindranath Tagore
was an uncle of Rabindranath Tagore. Rabindranath and Avanindranath were sitting
together one day, sipping tea early in the morning, chit-chatting, and Nandalal came
with a painting of Krishna. Rabindranath has written in his memoirs: 'I have never
seen such a beautiful painting of Krishna -- so alive that it looked as if he was just
going to come out of the painting any moment -- any moment his flute would start
singing a song. I was dazed.'
Avanindranath looked at the painting, threw the painting out of his house and told
Nandalal, 'Is this the way one paints Krishna? Even poor painters in Bengal do far
better.'
Rabindranath was very shocked. Rabindranath knew his uncle's paintings too, because
he also had been painting Krishna his whole life, and he was absolutely certain that no
painting of his uncle's could be compared with Nandalal's painting. Nandalal's
painting was far superior.
But he kept quiet. It was not right for him to interfere between the Master and the
disciple. Nandalal touched the feet of Avanindranath, went out, and for three years
disappeared.
Many times Rabindranath asked Avanindranath, 'What have you done to this poor
man? -- his painting was superb!'
And Avanindranath cried and he said, 'You are right. His painting is superb. I have
never been able to do such a beautiful thing.'
And when Nandalal left, Avanindranath took the painting inside and always had it in
his room.
'Then why,' Rabindranath asked, 'did you behave in such a rude way?'
And Avanindranath said, 'But I expect much more from him. It is not a question of
him doing a beautiful painting -- this is just the beginning. He has a much greater
potential. I am going to make many more demands on him.
And for three years Nandalal went around the villages of Bengal, because the Master
had said, 'Even village painters do far better paintings of Krishna.' So he learned from
village painters, ordinary poor painters. For three years he moved around in Bengal -the whole province. And then one day he appeared, touched the feet of the Master,
and said, 'You were right. I have learned a lot. You did well to throw my painting out.'
Avanindranath hugged him and said, 'I was waiting. I am getting old, and I was
getting frightened whether you would be coming back or not. I am happy. Your
painting was beautiful, but I see much more potential in you.'
Whenever I see a much greater potential in you I will hit you hard, because that is the
only reason you are here with me and I am here with you. I have to provoke you to
your very depths so that all that is dormant in you can start rising, can start soaring
high. And you don't know your potential... I know. So whenever I make demands feel
grateful.
You will be surprised to know that in Zen monasteries whenever the Master hits
somebody's head with his staff, the person who is hit bows down seven times and
touches the Master's feet to thank him. And disciples wait for that moment when they
will be hit, for that blissful moment to come when the Master will take so much
trouble as to hit their head with his staff. They dream about it, they pray, they hope
that some day that blissful moment will come.
Remember, this is an alchemical academy. You are not here just to be entertained but
to be transformed. And transformation is painful, because much that is old has to be
dropped. And that old stuff is not like clothes you can easily drop -- it has become
your skin. When your skin is peeled it hurts. But this is the only way to bring you to
your senses, this is the only way to destroy your shock-absorbers, this is the only way
to destroy the armour that surrounds you and keeps you in bondage. Slowly slowly
your own energy will start rising, your eyes will open, your ears will be able to hear.
Then God is first-hand. And always keep in mind that only a first-hand experience of
God is a true experience. It is not decided by the majority, it is not decided by
tradition, it is not decided by anything other than your own energy encounter with
God.
It was perfectly alright for the owls to think that the swan was mad. That's how people
have always been thinking: Buddha is mad, Mohammed is mad, Zarathustra is mad,
because how can they believe what they cannot see?
It is perfectly alright for the owls to throw the swan out, to drive him away. They
became afraid, shaken. If this swan is allowed to live in the tree he is going to disrupt
their tradition, he is going to destroy their way of life. They have always lived in
darkness and they have always believed in darkness. Darkness is their God, all their
rituals have arisen out of darkness. Their priests praise darkness, their learned people
write great treatises on darkness. Their whole philosophy is centred on the basic
theme of darkness. In their philosophy there is no place for sun and light and day.
Now this mad swan comes up and is trying to infiltrate, smuggle, some alien ideas
into their world. Their whole structure will collapse.
That's why Jesus is crucified, that's why people are so much against me. I am trying to
give you a new gestalt, a new pattern, a new way of life, a new approach to reality. I
am trying to open a new door to existence. Naturally, those who have very much
invested in the old patterns of life will be angry, will be madly angry. They would like
to drive me out of their world -- that's exactly what they are trying to do. It is all
natural, it is all simple. Once you understand it, you start laughing about it.
How do you go on believing in God? Why? How do you manage to believe in the
soul, and why? The same reason: 'Our fathers and their fathers and their fathers, in
fact the whole of our community has never seen a sun, so there is no such thing as a
sun. He is having you on. Don't listen to him. He will corrupt om religion.' You have
heard your father say to you, 'God is, and God is a Christian,' or 'God is a Hindu'; and
they had heard it from their fathers and so on and so forth. Rumours, gossip. Neither
your father has known nor have you known. Gather courage to drop all that which is
not YOUR knowledge.
This is the first requirement for being a sannyasin -- and this is the first requirement
for going into the inquiry after truth scientifically: drop all prejudices, drop all A
PRIORI conceptions. Start from the beginning, from the very beginning, from ABC,
as if you are Adam and Eve and there has been no tradition before you and there has
been no scripture before you.
D.H. Lawrence once said -- and I perfectly agree with him -- 'If all the scriptures of
the world are destroyed, man may become religious.' If whole traditions are simply
dissolved, then only is there some hope; otherwise who bothers to inquire? When the
tradition can supply you so easily and you have not to pay anything at all, why bother?
Others have known, you can simply believe. But to know is one thing, to believe is
just the opposite.
To believe means to go on living in darkness. To know means to be transformed,
transmuted, transplanted into another vision -- luminous, eternal.
These sutras are not to be believed, they have to be experimented with. These sutras
are simple clues to working it out within your own being. Unless you work on them
you will go on missing the point. You have to start looking at your own body as a
great spiritual lab and you have to look upon your life as a great adventure into reality.
And you have to be very alert, watchful, to see what is happening within and without.
These sutras are keys. If you really try to work upon your being, you will be surprised:
that you are emperors -- having great treasures, inexhaustible treasures in your being
-- and yet behaving like beggars.
Master Lu-tsu said: THE TWO MISTAKES OF INDOLENCE AND DISTRACTION
MUST BE COMBATED BY QUIET WORK THAT IS CARRIED ON DAILY
WITHOUT INTERRUPTION; THEN SUCCESS WILL CERTAINLY BE
ACHIEVED.
Success is a by-product; one need not think about it. And if you think about it, you
will not get it -- that is a condition. Don't think about success, because if you start
thinking about success you become divided. Then you are not totally in the work;
your real mind is in the future: 'How to succeed?' You have already started dreaming
how you will be when you have succeeded, how you will be when you have become a
Buddha -- what beauties, what benedictions, what blessings will be yours. Your mind
has started playing the game of greed, ambition, ego. Never think of success. Success
is a natural by-product.
If you work really sincerely upon yourself, success will follow you just as your
shadow follows you. Success has not to be the goal. That's why Lu-tsu says, 'Work
quietly, silently, un-troubled by any idea of success or failure.'
And remember, if you think too much of success you will constantly be thinking of
failure too. They come together, they come in one package. Success and failure cannot
be divided from each other. If you think of success, somewhere deep down there will
be a fear also. Who knows whether you are going to make it or not? You may fail.
Success takes you into the future, gives you a greed game, an ego projection, ambition,
and the fear also gives you a shaking, a trembling -- you may fail. The possibility of
failure makes you waver. And with this wavering, with this greed, with this ambition,
your work will not be quiet. Your work will become a turmoil; you will be working
here and looking there. You will be walking on this road and looking somewhere
faraway in the sky.
I have heard about a Greek astrologer who was studying stars, and one night, a very
starry night, he fell into a well. Because he was watching the stars and moving about
-- and he was so concerned with the stars that he forgot where he was -- he moved
closer and closer to a well and fell into it.
Some woman, an old woman who used to live nearby, rushed up, hearing the sound.
She looked inside the well, brought a rope, and pulled the great astrologer out. The
astrologer was very thankful. He said to the old woman, 'You don't know me but I am
the royal astrologer, specially appointed by the king. My fee is very large -- only very
rich people can afford to enquire about their future. But you have saved my life. You
can come tomorrow to me and I will show you: I will read your hand, I will look into
your birth-chart and I will interpret your stars, and your whole future will be plainly
clear to you.'
The old woman started laughing. She said, 'Forget all about it. You cannot see even
one step ahead, that there is a well, how can you predict my future? All bullshit!'
Don't look ahead too much, otherwise you will miss the immediate step. Success
comes, Lu-tsu says, of its own accord. Leave it to itself. This existence is a very
rewarding existence, nothing goes unrewarded.
That is the whole Indian philosophy of karma: nothing goes unrewarded or punished.
If you do something wrong, punishment follows like a shadow. If you do something
right, rewards are on the way. You need not bother about them, you need not think at
all, not even an iota of your consciousness need be involved with them; they come -their coming is automatic.
When you move on the road do you look again and again for your shadow -- whether
it is following you or not? And if somebody looks back again and again to see
whether the shadow is following or not, you will think that he is mad. The shadow
follows; it is inevitable. So if your work is in the right direction, with the right effort,
with the totality of your being, the reward follows automatically.
And what is the work? The first thing:
THE TWO MISTAKES OF INDOLENCE AND DISTRACTION MUST BE
COMBATED...
Indolence means laziness, lethargy; it is because of the feminine part in you. The
feminine part is lazy, lethargic, because it is passive. And the other is distraction; it is
because of the masculine part in you. The masculine part is always restless, active. It
wants to do a thousand and one things simultaneously.
A character of Camus' says, 'I want all the women of the world. I cannot be satisfied
by one or by a few or even by many. I want all the women of the world.' This is the
extreme male attitude. The woman is satisfied by one, the man is not even satisfied by
many. Contentment is natural to the woman, discontent is natural to the man.
Both have positive and negative polarities. If the woman allows her passivity to
become negative, it will create lethargy. That's why women have not created much in
the world, or very little -- you don't find great women painters and poets and scientists.
And it is not only because man has not allowed them. Even if freedom comes -- which
it has -- and woman is liberated, this lethargy is part of her being. She is not very
interested in doing, her interest is more in being. And this interest can be a great
blessing too, or a curse; it depends. If this restfulness becomes meditative, if this
restfulness really becomes contentment with existence, harmony with existence, it
will be a blessing. But usually, out of a hundred, in ninety-nine percent of cases it
becomes lethargy.
We don't know how to use our blessings. Then blessings become bitter and prove
curses.
And the male mind is restless. There also a blessing is possible: he can be very
creative. But it has not been so. Rather than being creative he has become destructive;
the blessing has turned into a curse. Man's restlessness has made him very anxious,
full of anxiety, tension. His whole mind is constantly boiling, he is always on the
verge of madness. Somehow he goes on managing to contain himself, but deep inside
him there is a crowd ready to burst forth. Any small excuse, and the man can go mad.
Because of this restlessness man has lost his beauty, his grace. Woman is graceful,
beautiful. Just watch a woman, the way she walks, the way she sits -- there is elegance.
Her being has a subtle silence, a restfulness; you can feel it in her vibe. In a house
where there is no woman you will see chaos. You can immediately know whether the
house is lived in by a bachelor: you will see chaos, all the things are topsy-turvy,
nothing is in its right place. You can immediately know whether a woman is part of
the house or not, because everything is in harmony, in its place. There is a grace, a
kind of exquisite climate, a very subtle climate of love, of culture, a musical quality to
the house. When man lives alone there is a neurotic quality to the house.
Both of these are beautiful if used rightly. Then the feminine part gives you grace and
the male part gives you creativity. And when grace and creativity meet, you are
whole.
But that rarely happens -- in a Buddha, in a Meera, in a Teresa, in a Jesus, in a
Magdalene -- very rarely. Ordinarily, just the opposite happens: the wrong sides meet.
Man's restlessness, neurosis, and woman's lethargy -- these two things meet, and then
you see the ugliest phenomenon possible.
And, let me remind you again: when I am talking about men and women I am not
using biological terminology. Each man has a woman within as well as a man within,
and each woman has a man within as well as a woman within. Man is not just man
and woman is not just woman. They are both, both are both. Their being is bisexual.
Maybe one is predominant, that's why one is man: the male part is predominant -- the
animus is in the conscious and the anima is deep in the unconscious -- then you are a
man. Or if you are a woman that means that the anima is in the conscious, the
feminine part is predominant, and the male part, the animus, is in the unconscious.
But both are always present together.Just as electricity cannot be without two poles,
positive and negative, no being can be without two poles. Man and woman, yin and
yang, positive/negative, Shiva/ Shakti -- you can find your own names for them.
These two mistakes have to be combated. Quiet work is needed to be CARRIED ON
DAILY WITHOUT INTERUPTION; THEN SUCCESS WILL CERTAINLY BE
ACHIEVED. And what is that quiet work? This is the quiet work:
IF ONE IS NOT SEATED IN MEDITATION, ONE WILL OFTEN BE
DISTRACTED WITHOUT NOTICING IT.
And you must have observed it. Thousands have reported it to me, because thousands
have been meditating around me and it is an accepted experience of all meditators that
when a person starts meditating he suddenly becomes aware of a strange phenomenon:
his mind has never before been so restless as it becomes when he meditates. That is
very puzzling in the beginning, because one hopes that through meditation the mind
will become quiet. And this is just the opposite that is happening: the mind becomes
more restless, you see more thoughts coming than in your ordinary day-to-day life.
Working in your shop, in the office, in the factory, thoughts don't bother you so much;
but when you sit in a temple or in a mosque or a church to meditate for a few minutes,
suddenly a great crowd of thoughts comes, surrounds you, starts pulling you to this
side and to that. A maddening experience, and puzzling, because the meditator was
hoping to become quiet and silent -- and this is just the reverse that is happening. Why
does it happen? The reason is this: you have always been with all these thoughts; even
when you are occupied in your shop, in your factory, in your office, these thoughts
have always been there. But you were so occupied that you didn't notice them, that's
all. What is new is not the crowd of thoughts -- thoughts don't know where you are
sitting, in a church, in a temple, in a meditation hall, they don't know -- all that is
happening is that when you are sitting in meditation you are not occupied with
anything on the outside so your whole mind becomes aware of all that is always
clamouring within you.
It is not because of meditation that more thoughts are coming to you, through
meditation you become aware of their presence -- they have always been there; you
just notice them more.
IF ONE IS NOT SEATED IN MEDITATION, ONE WILL OFTEN BE
DISTRACTED WITHOUT NOTICING IT. TO BECOME CONSCIOUS OF THE
DISTRACTION IS THE MECHANISM BY WHICH TO DO AWAY WITH
DISTRACTION.
Hence it is insisted on that you sit in meditation at least one or two hours every day so
that you become unoccupied, completely unoccupied, with the outer engagements and
your full observation is focused on your inner world. In the beginning you will see
you have opened a Pandora's box. In the beginning you will see you have entered into
a madhouse, and you will want to escape and become engaged again.
Avoid that temptation. To avoid this temptation is a must, otherwise you will never be
able to meditate. Many tricks have been found to avoid the inner turmoil.
Transcendental Meditation is a technique not of meditation but of avoiding facing
your inner reality. A mantra is given to you and you are told to repeat the mantra. That
helps -- not to meditate but to remain occupied. You go on repeating, 'Ram, Ram,
Ram...' or 'Coca-Cola, Coca-Cola, Coca-Cola...'. You go on repeating something -any word will do, your own name will do, any absurd sound will do. You go on
repeating. By repeating it you are occupied, and through that occupation you are
avoiding your inner turmoil.
This is not different: you were occupied in your office, you were occupied with the
film, seeing the movie, you were occupied listening to the radio, you were occupied
reading the newspaper; now you are occupied with this mantra. This is neither
meditation nor transcendence.
Real meditation means: don't avoid the inner mad-house, enter into it, face it,
encounter it, be watchful, because it is through watchfulness that you will overcome it.
It is because of avoiding it that it has been growing on and on. You have avoided
enough! Now there is no need to take the help of a mantra, no help is needed; just sit
silently.
Zen is the purest of meditations. Just sit silently, doing nothing. The most difficult
meditation is to sit silently, doing nothing. People ask me, 'Please give us some
support. If you give us some mantra it will be helpful, because just sitting silently
doing nothing is very difficult, most arduous.' A thousand and one things arise in
oneself: the body starts driving you crazy, the head starts itching, suddenly you feel
ants crawling upon your body, and then you see there is no ant, it is just the body
playing tricks; the body is trying to give you some support to be engaged. The body
wants to change the posture, the legs go to sleep -- the body is simply making things
available to you so that you can become occupied.
Avoid all occupation. For a few moments just be unoccupied and just see whatsoever
is happening inside. And you will be surprised, you WILL be surprised, because one
day, just by looking and looking and looking, thoughts start disappearing.
'Sitting quietly, doing nothing, spring comes and the grass grows by itself.'
This is the purest form of meditation, this is transcendental meditation. But nobody
can call it transcendental meditation because Maharishi Mahesh Yogi has made it a
trademark. TM is now a trademark! Nobody has ever done business in such a way.
You can be sued in a court if you call your meditation Transcendental Meditation. It is
patented. Look at the whole ridiculousness of it: meditation has become a thing, like a
commodity to be sold in the market-place.
This has been happening again and again. The so-called Indian gurus who go to
America -- they never succeed in changing anybody, but America succeeds in
changing them. They all become businessmen, they all start learning American ways.
They never change anybody; they cannot. If they were able to change anybody they
would not have gone anywhere -- those who want to be changed would have come to
them; there would have been no need for them to go anywhere. When somebody is
thirsty he starts searching for water. The well need not go to the thirsty -- the well
never goes -- the thirsty come to the well. And if you see a well on wheels, beware!
TO BECOME CONSCIOUS OF THE DISTRACTION IS THE MECHANISM BY
WHICH TO DO AWAY WITH DISTRACTION.
A tremendously pregnant sentence. The only way to get rid of distraction is to become
aware of it, to watch it, to silently be aware of it, to see what mind is doing with you
-- continuously distracting you. Just watch it. Many times you will forget, because
mind is cunning, very clever, very diplomatic; it knows all the strategies of the
politicians. Mind is essentially a politician; it will try all its magic charms on you.
Whatsoever you have been repressing it will bring. If you have been repressing sex,
when you start meditation, immediately you will see APSARAS descending from
heaven. The mind says, 'Look! What are you doing wasting your time? Beautiful
women are being sent by the god Indra, and what are you doing?' And if you have
been repressing sex then your mind will use sex as a bait for you. If you have been
repressing ambition your mind will start imagining that you have become the
president or the prime minister and you will start falling into that trap. If you have
been deprived of food up to now and you have been fasting, the mind will create such
beautiful, delicious dishes for you. The aroma, the smell of the food... and you are
distracted.
Hence one of my insistences for my sannyasins is: don't repress, otherwise you will
never be able to meditate. If you repress, then in meditation you will have to
encounter your repression. And whatsoever you have repressed becomes powerful,
immensely powerful; it takes roots in your unconscious.
Do you think the old stories of Indian seers -- old people they were, all old and almost
dead, shrunken, just bones, skeletons, because they were fasting and living in forests...
And, suddenly, one day they see Urvasi, the most beautiful dance-girl of the god Indra,
dancing around them. What does Urvasi see in these skeletons? How does she become
interested in these skeletons, and for what? The stories say that the god Indra sends
them to tempt. That is all nonsense! There is no god Indra and there is nobody
functioning as a tempter. There is no devil, no satan; the only devil is your repressed
mind. These are the people who have been repressing their sexuality, and they have
repressed so much that when they relax in meditation all that repression starts
surfacing: it takes beautiful forms.
Repress anything and you will see. Just do a three-day fast and you will come to know
what I am telling you. Just a three-day fast, and all your dreams will become full of
food. And there is every possibility that one day in your sleep you will simply start
moving, sleepwalking, towards the fridge. Your whole mind will become
food-obsessed.
Hence, I say don't repress. All the therapies available in this ashram are just to help
you to vomit the repressions that the society has forced on you. Once those
repressions are vomited, thrown out of your system, once those toxins are taken out of
your system, meditation becomes such an easy, simple thing -- just like a feather
falling slowly towards the earth or a dead leaf falling from the tree, slowly slowly...
Meditation is a very simple phenomenon -- it has to be because it is your spontaneity;
you are going towards your nature. Movement towards nature has to be easy,
movement away from nature has to be difficult. Meditation is not difficult, but
between your mind and your being there are a thousand and one repressions which
distract
Lu-tsu is right: just watch those distractions, be alert. If you are distracted and you
forget meditation, don't be worried. The moment you remember that you have been
distracted, again go back, again cool down, again make the heart quiet, again start
breathing silently. Don't feel guilty that you have been distracted, because that will be
another distraction. That's why I say mind is cunning. First it distracts you, and then
one moment you see... what are you doing? You were meditating, and you have gone
to Vrindavan and you are eating and... what are you doing? You drag yourself. Now
you start feeling guilty. This is not good.
Now feeling guilty is another distraction, now guilt makes you feel miserable -misery in another distraction. One distraction leads into another. Don't feel guilty,
don't feel angry. The moment you find yourself caught red-handed, simply go back
with no complaint. It is natural. For millions of lives you have been repressing, it is
only natural that the mind distracts. Take it for granted and move back, bring yourself
again to your centre, again and again and again. And slowly slowly the time at the
centre will become greater and greater, and distractions will be fewer and fewer. And,
one day, suddenly it happens: you are at the centre and there is no distraction.
This is success. And why is this called success? -- because this is the point where you
know that you are a god, that you have never been anybody else, that you had fallen
in a dream and dreamed that you had become a beggar.
INDOLENCE OF WHICH MAN IS CONSCIOUS, AND INDOLENCE OF WHICH
MAN IS UNCONSCIOUS, ARE A THOUSAND MILES APART. UNCONSCIOUS
INDOLENCE IS REAL INDOLENCE; CONSCIOUS INDOLENCE IS NOT
COMPLETE INDOLENCE, BECAUSE THERE IS STILL SOME CLARITY IN IT.
If you are lazy be consciously lazy. Know that you are lazy. Watch your laziness. Just
as you watch distraction, watch your laziness. At least watching is not lazy, watching
is not laziness, so something-is there which is not lazy. Being attentive of your
inattentions, one thing in you is still attentive, so you are not completely inattentive.
And all hope hangs on that small spot of no laziness, of no distraction. That small spot
is like a seed. It looks small but if time, patience, is given to it, it will become a big
tree with great foliage. And one day the Golden Flower will arrive.
DISTRACTION COMES FROM LETTING THE MIND WANDER ABOUT;
INDOLENCE COMES FROM THE MIND'S NOT YET BEING PURE.
DISTRACTION IS MUCH EASIER TO CORRECT THAN INDOLENCE. IT IS AS
IN SICKNESS: IF ONE FEELS PAINS AND IRRITATIONS, ONE CAN HELP
THEM WITH REMEDIES, BUT INDOLENCE IS LIKE A DISEASE THAT IS
ATTENDED BY LACK OF REALIZATION.
Distraction is easier to tackle because distraction is outward. Indolence is more
difficult because it is inward. Distraction is male, indolence is female. Distraction by
its very activity creates tensions which become unbearable, and you can become
aware of it easily. But indolence is very silent, dark; it makes no noise, it is simply
there. It is very difficult to become aware of it. First one has to become aware of
distractions. When all distractions disappear, then one becomes aware of indolence.
Then the whole energy is available to look inwards, then you see it there, holding you
like a rock, inactive, uncreative. Then watch it.
And remember, watching is the only key. Observation is meditation -- there is nothing
more to meditation; it is another name for being aware. And the miracle is that when
you become aware of something, utterly aware, it disappears. It remains only if you
are unaware. Your unawareness is a food for distraction, for indolence. Your
awareness means they are no longer being fed, they start starving. Sooner or later they
wither away of their own accord.
DISTRACTION CAN BE COUNTERACTED, CONFUSION CAN BE
STRAIGHTENED OUT, BUT INDOLENCE AND LETHARGY ARE HEAVY AND
DARK. DISTRACTION AND CONFUSION AT LEAST HAVE A PLACE, BUT IN
INDOLENCE AND LETHARGY THE ANIMA ALONE IS ACTIVE. IN
DISTRACTION THE ANIMUS IS STILL PRESENT, BUT IN INDOLENCE PURE
DARKNESS RULES. IF ONE BECOMES SLEEPY DURING MEDITATION,
THAT IS AN EFFECT OF INDOLENCE. ONLY BREATHING SERVES TO
OVERCOME INDOLENCE. ALTHOUGH THE BREATH THAT FLOWS IN AND
OUT THROUGH THE NOSE IS NOT THE TRUE BREATH, THE FLOWING IN
AND OUT OF THE TRUE BREATH TAKES PLACE IN CONNECTION WITH IT.
If you feel very sleepy while meditating then start watching your breath and sleep will
disappear. That's why many Buddhist monks who do Vipassana start suffering from
insomnia. I have come across many people who were suffering from insomnia
because they were practising Vipassana and they were not aware of it. If you watch
your breath, it destroys your sleep.
So to my sannyasins I say: never practise Vipassana for more than two or three hours
a day; and those three hours should be between sunrise and sunset, never after sunset.
If you practise Vipassana in the night you will disturb your sleep, and to disturb sleep
is to disturb your whole body mechanism.
One monk from Ceylon was brought to me. For three years he had not been able to
sleep. A sincere-monk... that was his problem. Thinking that Vipassana was so great,
he was practising it day in, day out. Even when he was in bed feeling that no sleep
was coming he would practise Vipassana. Now if you practise Vipassana in bed, it is
impossible for sleep to come. Sleep never comes to a person who is becoming very
alert of the breath. You can try it -- if you need insomnia you can try it. To watch the
breath is the best way to destroy sleepiness in you, because breath is life and sleep is
death; they are antagonistic to each other.
The child starts his life by breathing. The first act of life is breathing, and the last act
of life will be to let the breath out and never breathe again. The first act is inhalation
and the last act is exhalation. When there is no breathing we say this man is dead.
Remember it: sleep needs that you forget all about your breath. Sleep is a small death,
a tiny death -- and a beautiful death, because it gives you rest, relaxation, and
tomorrow morning you will come out of the death chamber fresh, younger,
rejuvenated.
Watch your breath when you feel sleepy in meditation. And never do such meditations
in the night.
And the second thing of great importance which the sutra says is: This breath that we
take in and out is not true breath, this is just the vehicle of the true breath.
What is true breath? In India we call it PRANA. This breath is just the horse; the rider
is invisible. This breath is just the horse of the rider called PRANA, vitality, or what
Henri Bergson used to call ELAN VITAL. It is invisible.
When you take breath in you are not only taking air in, you are taking life in. Without
air life will disappear. Life exists through air; it is the invisible part of air. Breath is
like the flower and life is like the fragrance that surrounds it. When you breathe there
is a double process going on.
Hence Yoga became very much interested in PRANAYAMA. PRANAYAMA means
expansion of breath. The deeper your breath goes, the more deeply you become alive;
the better your breath, the longer you will be able to live. Yoga became very interested
in the secret. The elixir is in the system of breathing. One can live very long. Yogis
have lived the longest.
I am not telling you to live long, because you can live a long but stupid life. Length is
not the question at all; intensity, depth, is the question. I am not interested in long life.
What is the point? If you are stupid it is better to die sooner.
Genghis Khan once asked a great wise man, 'What do you say -- should one live long?
Should one do something to live long? Is life a blessing or not?'
The wise man said, 'Sir, it depends. For example, if you live long that will be very bad.
If you die soon that will be a great blessing. If you sleep twenty-four hours a day that
will be really great, because there will be less trouble in the world.'
It depends.
But Yoga became very interested in long life, as if that in itself were a goal. And that's
where Yoga got lost: it became more and more physiological -- its concern became
focused on something unimportant.
But the secret is there -- it is in the breath. Breath is a vehicle of two energies: one is
the visible air, the tangible air that contains oxygen; and somewhere around the
oxygen is ELAN VITAL, PRANA -- that makes you more and more deeply alive,
aflame with life.
So, whenever you feel sleepy, just watch your breath and sleep will disappear. And
because of breath more life will enter in you; your indolence will disappear.
WHILE SITTING, ONE MUST THEREFORE ALWAYS KEEP THE HEART
QUIET AND THE ENERGY CONCENTRATED. HOW CAN THE HEART BE
MADE QUIET? BY THE BREATH.
Again, BY THE BREATH. Breath has functioned as one of the greatest of techniques.
ONLY THE HEART MUST BE CONSCIOUS OF THE FLOWING IN AND OUT
OF THE BREATH...
Just watch the breath coming in, the breath going out. In that very watchfulness your
sleep will disappear, your indolence will disappear, and you will feel centred.
Breath can be watched at two points: either at the tip of the nose where the air touches
on first entering your body, or at the last centre, at the navel centre, where the breath
goes and makes your belly move up and down. These are the two centres which you
can watch.
Just the other day somebody asked, 'Osho, watching the tip of the nose is good, but
what about Jewish noses?' In fact, only Jews have noses, others only believe they
have. If you have a Jewish nose then watch the tip of the nose where the air enters in.
AJewish nose is immensely helpful in such meditations. Feel happy that you have a
Jewish nose. And at least fifty percent of people here have Jewish noses, because fifty
percent of people here are Jews.
Reading the question I was really surprised because then I became very concerned
about Master Lu-tsu and his Chinese people to whom he was giving these methods.
They don't have any noses at all! It must have been really difficult for them to watch
the tip of the nose. What tip?
ONLY THE HEART MUST BE CONSCIOUS OF THE FLOWING IN AND OUT
OF THE BREATH; IT MUST NOT BE HEARD WITH THE EARS. IF IT IS NOT
HEARD, THEN THE BREATHING IS LIGHT; IF LIGHT, IT IS PURE. IF IT CAN
BE HEARD, THEN THE BREATH-ENERGY IS ROUGH; IF ROUGH, THEN IT IS
TROUBLED; IF IT IS TROUBLED, THEN INDOLENCE AND LETHARGY
DEVELOP AND ONE WANTS TO SLEEP. THAT IS SELF-EVIDENT.
HOW TO USE THE HEART CORRECTLY DURING BREATHING MUST BE
UNDERSTOOD. IT IS A USE WITHOUT USE.
Effort without effort, practising without practising, a pathless path, a gateless gate --
these are the expressions of Tao and Zen. You have to do something without effort,
without strain.
So the Master says:
IT IS A USE WITHOUT USE. ONE SHOULD ONLY LET THE LIGHT FALL
QUITE GENTLY ON THE HEARING.
You are to be in a let-go.
That is the difference between Yoga and Tao: Yoga is the path of will and Tao is the
path of surrender. Yoga says: Breathe in this way, take this much breath deep inside,
hold it there for this long, then exhale deeply, then hold it out for that long -- make a
certain pattern through will. Tao says: Let it happen.
ONE SHOULD ONLY LET THE LIGHT FALL QUITE GENTLY ON THE
HEARING -just as you are listening to me.
My words are falling on your ears. You need not jump upon them, you need not drag
them in -- there is no need. You simply remain attentive, silent, available, open.
THIS SENTENCE CONTAINS A SECRET MEANING. WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO
LET THE LIGHT FALL? IT IS THE SPONTANEOUS RADIATION OF THE
LIGHT OF THE EYES. THE EYE LOOKS INWARD ONLY AND NOT
OUTWARD. TO SENSE BRIGHTNESS WITHOUT LOOKING OUTWARD
MEANS TO LOOK INWARD...
Whenever you are in a kind of let-go you will feel a great light inside you. That
happens automatically in a let-go. When you are surrendered to existence you will
feel very very bright inside -- a great light inside and a great delight outside. It
happens naturally. And when you feel that brightness inside this is what is meant by
looking in.
TO SENSE BRIGHTNESS WITHOUT LOOKING OUTWARD MEANS TO LOOK
INWARD; IT HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH AN ACTUAL LOOKING WITHIN.
WHAT DOES HEARING MEAN? IT IS THE SPONTANEOUS HEARING OF THE
LIGHT OF THE EAR. THE EAR LISTENS INWARDLY ONLY AND DOES NOT
LISTEN TO WHAT IS OUTSIDE. TO SENSE BRIGHTNESS WITHOUT
LISTENING TO WHAT IS OUTSIDE IS TO LISTEN INWARDLY...
When you start feeling a light behind your eyes and within your ears, deep inside you,
a source of your own, then you are settled, centred, then the heart is quiet. And then
you are in the world and yet beyond it. This is transcendence.
... IT HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH ACTUALLY LISTENING TO WHAT IS
WITHIN. IN THIS SORT OF HEARING, ONE HEARS ONLY THAT THERE IS NO
SOUND; IN THIS KIND OF SEEING, ONE SEES ONLY THAT NO SHAPE IS
THERE.
You will not see any shape, you will not hear any sound within, you will see only a
silent light -- a soundless sound, a formless light. Hence God is defined as soundless
sound, formless form.
IF THE EYE IS NOT LOOKING OUTWARD AND THE EAR IS NOT
HARKENING OUTWARD, THEY CLOSE THEMSELVES AND ARE INCLINED
TO SINK INWARD. ONLY WHEN ONE LOOKS AND HARKENS INWARD
DOES THE ORGAN NOT GO OUTWARD NOR SINK INWARD. IN THIS WAY
INDOLENCE AND LETHARGY ARE DONE AWAY WITH. THAT IS THE UNION
OF THE SEED AND THE LIGHT OF THE SUN AND MOON.
If your hearing is inward, your seeing is inward -- and that means you are feeling light
without form, sound without sound, a silent music inside -- your inner man and inner
woman have met. This is the union, the total orgasm, UNIO MYSTICA.
IF, AS A RESULT OF INDOLENCE, ONE BECOMES SLEEPY, ONE SHOULD
STAND UP AND WALK ABOUT. WHEN THE MIND HAS BECOME CLEAR
ONE SHOULD SIT DOWN AGAIN. IN THE COURSE OF TIME THERE WILL
BE SUCCESS WITHOUT ONE'S BECOMING INDOLENT AND FALLING
ASLEEP.
These sutras have to be practised. Without practice, make efforts to enter into the
secrets of these sutras. Without strain, learn to surrender and be in a let-go.
The Secret of Secrets, Vol 1
Chapter #16
Chapter title: In the Lake of the Void
26 August 1978 am in Buddha Hall
Archive code:
7808260
ShortTitle:
SOS116
Audio: Yes
Video:
No
Length: 100 mins
The first question:
Question 1
WOULD YOU PLEASE COMMENT FURTHER ON THE DIFFERENCES
BETWEEN C. G. JUNG'S 'PROCESS OF INDIVIDUATION' AND THE ESSENCE
OF THE SECRET OF THE GOLDEN FLOWER?
Habib, Carl Gustav Jung was groping in the right direction but he had not yet arrived.
It was not his own experience, it was a philosophy. He was thinking about
individuation, he was going into the idea of individuation deeper and deeper, but it
was not his own meditation, it was not his own existential experience.
THE SECRET OF THE GOLDEN FLOWER IS an alchemical process. These are the
words of those who have known.
Jung was not an individual in the sense of individuation, he was still divided: he had
the conscious mind and the unconscious mind and the collective unconscious mind.
He was not one, he himself was a multiplicity. He was a crowd as everybody else is.
He had all the fears, all the greeds, all the ambitions that any normal human being is
expected to have. He was not a Buddha, he was not enlightened. He had not known
his own inner being which is timeless.
In the moment of inner illumination, all differences and distinctions disappear. There
is only pure consciousness -- neither conscious nor unconscious nor collective
unconscious.
The same was happening with Sri Aurobindo in India. He was also talking about
conscious mind and the superconscious mind, and so on and so forth.
In the moment of illumination, mind disappears. Mind means division; whether you
divide it into conscious and unconscious or you divide it into conscious and
superconscious docs not make a difference. Mind means division. Individuality means
undividedness. That is the meaning of the word 'individual': indivisible. Mind is
bound to be a crowd; mind cannot be one -- by its very nature it has to be many. And
when the mind disappears, the one is found. Then you have come home. That is
individuation.
But still I say Jung was groping in the dark. He had not yet arrived at the door; he had
only dreamed about the door.
There are parallels in human history. For example, Democritus, the Greek thinker,
stumbled upon the idea of the atom without any experimentation. There was no
possibility to experiment in his days; no modern sophisticated techniques were
available. He could not have divided the atom, he could not have come to the atomic
structure of matter, but he speculated. He must have been a great thinker -- but only a
thinker. He stumbled upon the idea of atomism.
Then there is Albert Einstein and modern physics. Both talk about the atomic structure
but the difference is tremendous: Democritus only talks, modern physics knows.
In the East also there has been talk about atomism. Kanad, one of the great thinkers of
India, has talked about atomism, and in a very subtle, refined way. But it is all talk. In
fact, it is because he talked so much about atoms -- his whole philosophy is based on
the hypothesis of atoms -- that his name became Kanad. KAN means atom. KANAD
means one who continuously talks about atoms. But still, it was philosophy, there was
no real experimentation; it was not based on any scientific exploration. He must have
been a great thinker. Almost three thousand years before Albert Einstein, he stumbled
-- and I say 'stumbled' -- upon the truth of atomism. But it was an unproved
hypothesis.
There are many parallels like that.
The same is the case with Carl Gustav Jung and the process we are talking about: the
process given by THE SECRET OF THE GOLDEN FLOWER.
THE SECRET OF THE GOLDEN FLOWER IS an alchemical treatise. It knows; and
if you follow the method, you will come to know. It is absolutely certain. And when I
say this, I am saying it because I know -- because I have gone through the process.
Yes, the Golden Flower blooms in you. You come to a point where the many
disappear, the multitude disappears, the fragments of the mind disappear, and you are
left all alone. That is the meaning of the word 'alone': all alone, all one.
If you think about it, the thinking is bound to take you to a certain line. If you think
about it, then you will ask how to come to the One, how to make these fragments of
the mind join together, how to glue them together. But that will not be real unity.
Glued or unglued, they will remain separate. A crowd can be transformed into an
army -- that means that now it is glued together, it is no more a mob -- but the many
are still many, although maybe with a certain discipline. It is as if there is a pile of
flowers and you make a garland out of those flowers: a thread runs through all the
flowers and gives them a certain kind of unity.
That's what Jung was trying to do: to bring these fragments together, to glue them
together. That is his whole process of individuation.
The real experience of individuation is totally different. You don't glue these
fragments together, you simply let them disappear. You drop them, and then, when all
the fragments of the mind have disappeared, receded farther and farther away from
you, suddenly you find the One. In the absence of the mind it is found -- not by
joining the mind together in a certain discipline, not by putting mind together into a
certain kind of union. Union is not unity, union is only an order imposed on chaos.
This can be done, and then you will have a false kind of individuation. You will feel
better than before, because now you will not be a crowd, a mob. Many noises will not
be there, they will have fallen into a certain kind of harmony; a certain adjustment
will have arisen in you. Your conscious mind will be friendly with the unconscious,
not antagonistic. Your unconscious will be friendly with the collective unconscious,
not antagonistic. There will be a thread running through the flowers, you will be more
like a garland than a pile.
But still, individuation in the sense I am talking about here has not happened.
Individuation is not the unity of mind but the disappearance of the mind. When you
are utterly empty of the mind, you are one. To be a no-mind is the process of real
individuation.
Jung was groping in the dark, coming very very close -- just as Democritus was
coming closer to the atomic structure of matter -- but he was as far away from real
individuation as Democritus was far away from real, modern physics. Modern physics
is not a speculation, it is a proven phenomenon.
For THE SECRET OF THE GOLDEN FLOWER individuation is not speculation, it
is experience. Before one can know the One, the many have to be said goodbye to.
One has to be capable of becoming utterly empty. Individuation is the flowering of
inner emptiness -- yes, exactly that. The Golden Flower blooms in you when you are
utterly empty. It is a flower in the void. In the lake of the void the golden lotus
blooms.
So the process is totally different. What Jung is doing is trying to put all the pieces
together -- as if a mirror had fallen and now you are trying to put it together, to glue it
together. You can glue it together, but you will never find the same mirror again. A
broken mirror is a broken mirror.
In the East the work has moved into a totally different dimension. We have to let this
mind go. Each part of the mind has to be dropped slowly slowly. In deep awareness,
meditativeness, thoughts disappear. Sooner or later mind becomes contentless, and
when the mind is contentless, it is no-mind -- because mind as such is nothing but the
whole process of thought. When you are without thought, not even a single thought
stirring in your being, then there is no-mind. You can call it individuation, you can
call it SAMADHI, YOU can call it NIRVANA or what you will.
But beware! People like Jung can be very alluring, because they talk in terms which
are really beautiful: they talk about individuation, and you may start thinking that the
individuation of Jung is the same.
It is not the same, it can't be the same -- he never meditated himself. He was really
afraid of meditation. He was basically afraid of the East. And when his friend,
Richard Wilhelm, who had translated the I CHING into German and who was also the
translator of THE SECRET OF THE GOLDEN FLOWER, went mad, he became
even more afraid. Then he started saying that the methods of the East are not useful
for the West, they are dangerous. Then he started saying that the Eastern methods
should not be used in the West because the West has followed a totally different line
of evolution. Yoga, Tantra, Tao, Zen, Sufism -- no Eastern methods should be tried by
the Western mind. Then he started saying that. He was really afraid.
And he was not aware of what he was talking about -- he had never tried these
methods. Wilhelm went mad, not because he tried these methods, he became mad
because he was trying to make a synthesis of Western psychology with Eastern
psychology. That thing can drive you mad. He was not practising, he was not a
practising meditator, he was philosophizing.
In philosophy East and West cannot meet -- it is impossible. In philosophy you cannot
make positive and negative meet. But in actuality they do meet. In actuality the
positive never exists without the negative. In actuality death is nothing but the
culmination of life. In actuality silence and sound are two aspects of the same
phenomenon. In reality man and woman are together, one, but in philosophy you
cannot make them meet, because philosophy is a process of the mind. Mind divides,
mind cannot unite. Only in a state of no-mind, in existential experience, do they meet.
It happened...
A Sufi mystic, Baba Farid, was given a present from a king. The present was a
beautiful pair of scissors, golden, studded with diamonds. The king had loved them
very much -- some other king had given them to him as a present.
When he came to see Farid he thought, 'This will be a beautiful present.' So he
brought those scissors. Farid looked at them, gave them back to the king and he said,
'What will we do with them here? -- because scissors separate, cut, divide. They will
not be of any use to me. Rather than scissors, give me a needle, which joins, which
puts things together. A needle will be more representative of me than scissors.'
Mind is a pair of scissors: it goes on cutting. It is like a rat, a mouse, which goes on
chewing.
You will be surprised to know that one of the mythological figures in India, Ganesh,
the god with the head of an elephant, is the god of logic. He rides on the back of a rat;
the rat is his vehicle. Logic is rat-like: it chews. It is a pair of scissors: it cuts.
Mind always makes things divided. Mind is a kind of prism. Pass a ray of white light
through it and immediately it is divided into seven colours. Pass anything through the
mind and it becomes dual. Life and death are not life-and-death, the reality is lifedeath.
It should be one word, not two; not even a hyphen in between. Lifedeath is one
phenomenon. Lovehate is one phenomenon. Darknesslight is one phenomenon.
Negativepositive is one phenomenon. But pass this one phenomenon through the
mind and the one is divided immediately in two. Lifedeath becomes life and death -not only divided but death becomes antagonistic to life. They are enemies. Now you
can go on trying to make these two meet, and they will never meet.
Kipling is right -- that 'East is East and West is West and never the twain shall meet.'
Logically, it is true. How can the East meet the West? How can the West meet the East?
But existentially it is utter nonsense. They are meeting everywhere. For example, you
are sitting here in Poona. Is it East or is it West? If you are comparing it with London,
it is East; but if you are comparing it with Tokyo, it is West. What exactly is it, East or
West? At each point East and West are meeting, and Kipling says, 'Never the twain
shall meet.' The twain are meeting everywhere. No single point is such that East and
West are not meeting and no single man is such that East and West are not meeting. It
cannot be otherwise; they have to meet -- it is one reality. East, West -- one sky.
But mind divides. And if you are trying to put things together through the same mind,
you will go crazy. That's what happened to Richard Wilhelm. A beautiful man, a
genius in his own right, but just intellectual. And when he went mad, Jung was
naturally afraid. It was Wilhelm who had introduced Jung to these secret books of the
East: the I Ching and THE SECRET OF THE GOLDEN FLOWER; he had persuaded
Jung to write a commentary on this book. He became really afraid of the East. He
talked about these things but he never tried in any way to practise them. And he has
prescribed to the Western man that the West should evolve its own yoga, its own
methods of meditation. It should not follow the Eastern methods.
It is as stupid as some Eastern chauvinist saying that the East should evolve its own
science, its own physics, its own chemistry. It should not follow the West because
these methods have been developed in the West. They cannot be followed because
'East is East and West is West'.
Do you think that the East has to evolve its own chemistry? What difference will there
be? Will water evaporate in a different way in the East than it evaporates in the West?
Nothing will be different.
And if it is so with matter, it is so with the inner consciousness too. All the differences
are superficial. All the differences are in your conditioning, not in your being. Your
essential being is the same; whether you have the skin of a white man or a black man
does not matter, the difference is only of a little bit of colour. In the old days they used
to say that the difference is only that of a little pigment -- four annas' worth. The white
man has a little less pigment than the black man. Remember, the black man is richer,
four annas richer. But there is just four annas' worth of difference in the colour of the
body. Sooner or later we will be able to invent injections so that the white man can
become black and the black can become white. Just an injection, and in the morning
you are a perfect nigger! The difference is not much; it is only superficial -- just on
the surface.
And so is the difference in the mind. A Hindu has a different mind, certainly, than a
Mohammedan or a Jew, but the mind is nothing but that which has been taught to you.
When the child is born he is neither Hindu nor Jew nor Christian, he is simply pure
essence. If the child is born of Jewish parents and is brought up by Hindu parents, he
will have a Hindu mind, not a Jewish mind. He will never become aware that he was a
Jew; his blood will not show it. Blood will not show at all who is who. You cannot go
and have your blood tested by the doctor to show whether you are a Hindu or a
Mohammedan. Your bones will not show it. So the difference is only in that which is
taught to you, imposed upon you. The difference is only of clothing, dresses, and
nothing else. Behind the dresses, the same naked humanness.
So what nonsense is Jung talking about: that the West has to develop its own alchemy,
its own Tantra, its own Tao? But he was afraid. This was his way to avoid facing his
own fear.
The West has not to evolve anything just because it is the West. Yes, every age has to
evolve its own methods, but that is a different matter; it has nothing to do with East
and West. I am evolving new methods because many things have changed. In these
twenty-five centuries since Buddha much has changed. Buddha was working on a
differently conditioned consciousness. Much has changed. Man has become more
mature, doubts more, is more sceptical. 'Yes' has become more difficult to say. He
would like to explore, but without any beliefs. He cannot trust easily; distrust has
become very deep-rooted. He is no more innocent; knowledge has corrupted him.
These changes have happened. A few changes have to be made in the devices
according to these changes. But it has nothing to do with East and West.
And particularly in the modern age to talk of East and West is sheer crap. The globe is
one. For the first time this beautiful phenomenon has happened in the world: we are
global, we are universal. Nations are just hangovers, just hangovers from the past -old habits that die hard. And because old habits die hard, man is suffering
unnecessarily.
Now science and technology have made it possible that no human being should have
to remain in a kind of semi-starvation. But the old boundaries of the nations are
preventing it. If people are poor in the world now it is not because methods are not
available to help them but because of the nations and the states and the political
boundaries. Man is capable enough now to make this whole earth a paradise, but
politicians won't allow it. The one thing that the new generation has to do sooner or
later -- and the sooner the better -- is to dissolve nations. We need one world, and that
one world will be the answer to many questions and many problems.
Poverty can disappear immediately if the world is taken as a whole and if all that man
has invented, discovered, is used. Otherwise poverty cannot disappear; it is going to
persist. Illness can disappear from the world, man can become healthier and healthier;
all the means are available, just the old rotten mind goes on clinging.
My own suggestion is for a world government. No national government is needed
anymore. All national governments are outdated. But politicians won't allow it to
happen. Why? -- because if it happens they will all disappear. Where will
Morarji-bhai Desai be? Where will all these many prime ministers and presidents be?
All these people will become insignificant. Then they will not be able to make much
fuss and they will not be able to create much noise on the stage; they will be forgotten.
They are really useless, they have to be put in the museums; they are no longer
needed. The world needs one government. The world needs all nations to disappear,
only then will wars disappear, otherwise stupid wars, just for small pieces of land
which belong to nobody, or belong to all... Wars can disappear only if nations
disappear; they are by-products of nations. But politicians don't like that -- their whole
importance will be gone. In fact, politicians like to create more and more nations.
India was one nation but Indian politicians decided to have two, India and Pakistan, so
there could be double the number of prime ministers, presidents, ministers, and all
kinds of buffoons. But then Pakistan was divided in two again because when Pakistan
was one, then the Bengalis were suffering: they were not prime ministers and they
were not presidents. They had to separate from Pakistan. Now India has become three
countries.
And if it goes on and on in this way, India will become many countries. Now, deep
down, South India wants to separate from North India over the question of language.
Now they say that they are a different race, Dravidian, and the North is a different
race, Aryan. 'Our blood is separate, our ideal is separate, our language is separate.' So
the idea of separating from the North is getting more and more powerful, because then
they will have their own prime minister.
Up to now all the prime ministers have been from the North. They take the president
from the South just to console them, because the president in India is a nonentity. He
is like the Queen of England: he is the nominal head of the country, without any
power. Just to console the South, they take all the presidents from the South. And the
prime minister is the powerful man, the whole power is his; he is from the North.
Now the South is suffering. Southern politicians particularly suffer very much. Sooner
or later the South would like to separate.
The world goes on dividing into small parts. If all the politicians are allowed, then
each village will be a nation because then each village will have its own politicians,
its own parliament, president, prime minister, ministers -- if it is allowed. But why is
it not allowed? It is not allowed, again for a political reason, because if South India
becomes separate, then half of Morarji Desai's power is gone. So those who are in
power resist: they would not like the country to be divided. And those who are not in
power -- they try to divide the country... This goes on.
The world simply needs to decide one day to drop all this nonsense and to become
one. No passports should be needed, no visas should be needed. We need a world
citizenship. We need freedom to move. Why so much distrust? Why so much
antagonism towards each other? This earth is our planet. We should be able to move
freely. This world is not yet a free world because of the hangovers of the past. They
can be dropped. And with the dropping of them, the world can become as rich as you
would like, as healthy as you would like. Poverty can disappear.
Poverty cannot disappear by Mahatma Gandhi's travelling in a third-class
compartment. These are just strategies, political strategies. How can poverty
disappear by Mahatma Gandhi's travelling in a third-class compartment? In fact, he is
crowding the third-class compartment which is already crowded! If he had moved in
an air-conditioned compartment, at least there would have been one person less in the
crowd. And these things don't help.
But poor people like these things. They think their poverty is something very special:
'Look, even Mahatma Gandhi moves in a third-class compartment. Look at Mahatma
Gandhi. He lives like a poor man.' So poverty has something spiritual in it. Poverty
has been worshipped, that's why the world remains poor. And wherever poverty is
worshipped, those people are going to remain poor.
In India poverty is worshipped -- as if there were something spiritual in it. It is
pathological. Nothing is spiritual in it. To be poor simply means you are stupid. You
cannot manage. To be poor means only that you are too attached to old forms which
are no longer useful in the world. To be poor simply means you are not inventive, not
creative. To be poor simply means that you are not intelligent. It is nothing spiritual; it
simply shows lack of energy, lack of intelligence. Poverty should be condemned,
poverty should not be worshipped. We have to change the whole consciousness of
man about these things, then they can be dispersed very easily. Technologically we are
able to live in a very affluent world, but psychologically we are not capable of living
in an affluent world. It happens that a person becomes rich but still goes on living the
life of a poor man, and people appreciate it very much. They say, 'Look, he has so
many riches, he is so rich, and still look at the simplicity of the man.' It is the sheer
foolishness of the man. Why should he not live the riches that he has attained through
great labour and effort? He is just a miser. He does not know how to live richly. He
hides his impotence to live richly behind a beautiful facade that he is 'simple'.
We have to change these ideals. Poverty is ugly, as ugly as illness. But it is going to
remain there if nations remain. It is going to remain there if politicians remain. It is
going to remain there if the world remains divided. Wars will continue. We can go on
talking about peace but we will go on preparing for war, because peace is just talk.
The hangover of the past is big. What is the hangover? Three thousand years of
continuous quarrelling and fighting and murdering and killing -- that is our past. We
have to disconnect ourselves from the past. The Western man has to disconnect
himself from the Western past, the Eastern man has to disconnect himself from the
Eastern past, the Hindu from the Hindu past and the Christian from the Christian past.
And the methodology of disconnecting oneself from one's past is going to be the same
-- it cannot be Eastern, it cannot be Western. The methodology to disconnect oneself
from all past hangovers is going to be the same.
But Jung was very afraid. He was afraid of moving into silence, he was afraid of
moving into his own inner being, because that inner being is first experienced as utter
emptiness. But he would not say that he is afraid, he said he had to devise Western
methods. There are no Eastern methods, no Western methods. Methods are methods.
And when you are trying to go beyond mind, it is the same method: awareness. What
else will you do in the West? What can you do except be aware? To be aware, alert, to
be in the moment, spontaneous and total, wherever you are, will help you to get rid of
the whole past -- political, social, religious. And once you are disconnected from the
past, your mind disappears, because your mind is nothing but the past hanging around
you. Mind is memory, memory is past, and when there is no mind you are utterly here,
brilliantly here and now.
In that luminous state of being here and now is individuation in the sense of the book,
THE SECRET OF THE GOLDEN FLOWER. Jung was thinking in the right direction,
but only thinking.
Habib himself is a Jungian analyst, hence the question. It may be very hard for him to
understand what I am saying. He has asked another question, too. He says, 'Osho,
when you mention Freud, Jung and Adler in one line, it hurts. It appears as if you are
mentioning Buddha, Christ and Nixon together.' It will be hard for you, Habib, but the
truth is that Freud is a genius, Jung and Adler are just pygmies, just pygmies. They
don't reach to his height. Freud is a pioneer: he has contributed something of immense
value to humanity. Freud is the source, the very tree, Jung and Adler are just branches.
Freud can be there without Jung and Adler -- he will not miss anything -- But Jung
and Adler cannot even exist without him. You cannot conceive of it. Can you conceive
of Jung and Adler if there had been no Freud? It is impossible even to conceive of it.
They are his children even if they have disobeyed him, even if they have rebelled
against him; it makes no difference. You can fight with your father, you can go against
him, but still, he is your father. You can fight with him, you can murder him, but still
he is your father. You cannot kill the relationship. You can kill the father, but you
cannot kill his fatherhood. That is absolutely determined.
Now there is no way to undo it. Freud is the father, Jung and Adler are just rebellious
children -- small branches which are trying to go away, far away, from the father tree.
But they cannot go very far because deep down they still get the shape from the same
tree, deep down they are still joined. They are reactions against Freud.
And the reason is not that they have been able to develop something very new -nothing of the sort. Jung is to Freud exactly what Judas is to Christ. It always happens.
The closest disciple can betray the Master very easily. Judas was the closest disciple
of Jesus, the most intelligent, educated disciple -- more intelligent, more educated
than anybody else. In fact, more educated than Jesus himself. He was the most
sophisticated one. And, of course, he was hoping that he would be the second: that
after Jesus was gone, he would be the leader. He was next to Jesus, and naturally a
deep jealousy and ego started arising in him -- why couldn't he be the first? How long
had he to wait? And he knew more; he was more articulate than Jesus -- Jesus was
uneducated. Naturally, he must have started thinking in these terms. And the conflict
arose. He must have been very egoistic.
And it is not that it has happened only once, it has happened many times. It happened
with Mahavira; his own son-in-law betrayed him. He was his disciple and then left
with five hundred other disciples. Buddha's own cousin-brother, Devadatta, betrayed
him. He tried to murder Buddha, poison him. Why? -- because Devadatta was always
thinking that he was as good as Buddha, 'So why is Buddha respected so much, and
why not me? We have grown up together, we have been educated by the same
teachers, we are both from the same family, the same royal family, why has he
become the enlightened one and I am still a disciple?' He wanted to declare himself
also an enlightened one. It was ambition, it was jealousy, it was ego.
And the same was the case with Jung and Adler and a few others. Freud is a
revolution. Freud is a milestone in the history of human consciousness, a great
transforming force -- not himself enlightened like Buddha or Mahavira or Jesus, but a
great revolutionary as far as thinking is concerned, and he has opened a door which
makes many things possible. Without Freud it would not have been possible for
Tantra to be understood by the West. Without Freud the Western man would have
lived with Victorian puritanism, with Victorian pseudoness, hypocrisy. Freud opened
the doors for man to be more real, to be more authentic, to be more honest and true.
Jung and Adler are just offshoots. Jung was second to Freud. Freud himself had
chosen him as his successor -- that's why I say he is almost like a Judas. But Freud
missed. In the very choice he missed. He himself was not enlightened; he must have
chosen the most egoistic because the most egoistic is the most active. Jung was the
most egoistic. You can look at the old pictures of him with Freud and with the other
disciples. Jung seems to be the most egoistic. Even in pictures he cannot hide it; it is
impossible to hide -- it is written all over his face.
Freud must have chosen him because he was articulate, talented, active, tremendously
active. He was able to philosophize, speculate, argue. But all those qualities were such
that sooner or later Jung became aware that he could become a master in his own right,
he could start a new school of psychology in his own right. Why should he bother to
play second fiddle? He could be the first, the foremost. He started his own school.
His school is just a reaction, a reaction to Freud. And his understanding never went
very deep, although he was groping in the right direction. But, I repeat, it was groping.
He was not conscious of it, he was just moving as far away from Freud as possible.
Freud had a very scientific attitude. Jung started moving into the world of art -- just to
be away from Freud. By accident he started moving in the right direction. Freud was
very mathematical, Jung started becoming poetic. Freud was very factual,Jung started
becoming more and more mythological. This was because of reaction. He had to
prove himself separate, utterly separate from Freud. He had to drop all kind of links
with Freud. He had to become his polar opposite, unknowingly, unconsciously.
But, in a way, it was good. It was good in the sense that he stumbled upon a few facts
which Freud would never have stumbled upon on his own, because he was
down-to-earth, practical, pragmatic, scientific, a realist. And there are many things
which cannot be contained by facts. There are millions of things which cannot be
reduced to facts. And the higher you go, the deeper you go, the more difficult it
becomes to talk the language of science or to use the language of science. One has to
have more poetic freedom. One needs poetry, one needs fiction in order to express.
Mythology becomes the only means to express certain heights and depths.
But Habib must be feeling hurt. He has been a Jungian analyst and now he has fallen
into my hands. And I am going to beat him as hard as possible because I have to
create something totally new out of him: not an analyst but an individual. I have to
give him individuation and for that he will have to suffer much, too. He will have to
pass through many fires. This also is a fire. Once I see your attachments I start
attacking them, and his attachment is with Jung. Now, because of your attachment,
Habib, even Jung has to suffer.
The second question:
Question 2
WHY DO YOU USE PARABLES?
A parable is a way of saying things which cannot be said. A parable is a finger
pointing to the moon. Forget the finger and look at the moon. Don't catch hold of the
finger, don't start biting the finger: the parable has to be understood and forgotten .
And that is the beauty of a parable, a story. When it is told, you listen attentively
because a story always creates curiosity: 'What is going to happen?' You become
attentive, you become all ears, you become feminine, you become very intrigued You
start expecting: 'What is going to happen?' The parable creates suspense, it brings a
climax, and then, suddenly, the conclusion. And when after the climax the conclusion
happens, you are so hot that the conclusion sinks deep into your heart.
To say something about truth is not an easy matter. One has to devise parables, poetry,
different methods and means so that the listener can be aroused into a kind of passion,
can become vibrant, available, can wait for what is going to happen.
And it is not only I who am using parables; that has been always so. Buddha used
them, Chuang Tzu used them, Jesus used them -- all the great teachers of the world
have been using the parable as a method, and it has served its purpose down the ages.
It is still tremendously meaningful, and it is going to remain meaningful.
A parable is not just a story. It is not to entertain you but to enlighten you. That is the
difference between an ordinary story and a parable. A parable has a message in it, a
coded message in it; you will have to decode it. Sometimes it will take you your
whole life to decode the message, but in its very decoding you will be transformed.
A parable is not an ordinary story just to entertain you for the moment, its significance
is eternal, its significance is not momentary. In fact, it is more significant than your
so-called facts, because facts have a limited impact. A fact is an event: it happens and
then it disappears. And after it has disappeared there is no way to be certain about it -no way at all.
You cannot be certain whether Jesus existed or not; you cannot be absolutely certain
whether Jesus is a historical person or not. At most you can feel the probability that he
may have been. But the doubt persists -- he may not have been. Who knows? -because except for his four disciples, nobody mentions him, nobody at all.
Now these four disciples may just have been the inventions of a novelist. The whole
story is so dramatic, it has all that a dramatic story needs, all that a modern film is
based on: a prostitute falling in love with Jesus, a carpenter's son declaring himself the
son of God, a young man doing miracles, opening the eyes of blind people, giving
limbs to those who had none, helping people who had suffered their whole life to be
healthy and whole -- not only that, but calling forth Lazarus out of his grave. What
more suspense, what more do you need to make a story dramatic? And then being
caught, then all the political intrigue, then the efforts to kill him. And then, one day,
he is crucified. And the story does not end there. Then after three days he is
resurrected.
Now, no detective novel has so much in it. Resurrection... Then he is seen again by
the disciples, he again meets his disciples, and they cannot even recognize him. And
then this son of a carpenter, uneducated, unsophisticated, becomes the founder of the
greatest religion in the world, he also becomes the founder of the greatest religious
empire in the world -- he defeats all other prophets and all other messengers of God.
Now, what credentials did he have? Buddha was the son of a king, but this carpenter's
son has defeated Buddha as far as the number of followers is concerned. Socrates has
not a single follower in the world today -- and he was such a sophisticated man, so
intelligent, so utterly intelligent. And he has the same story, he was poisoned and
killed, yet he could not gather any followers. What happened? How did it happen?
And was this man Jesus really there, a historical figure? -- because no history books
carry his name, there are no monuments. He may have been just a fiction, a fictitious
story.
Historical events cannot be proved once they have happened -- cannot be proved
totally, absolutely. At most they remain more or less probable. But a parable has an
eternal reality about it. It does not claim any historicity, it simply claims a message. It
has nothing to do with events that happen in time.
A parable is something that happens in timelessness. It remains relevant. Whether
Jesus existed or not is not the point, but the stories that he has told ARE. Whether he
told them or they are some fictitious invention of some novel-writer doesn't matter,
but those parables have eternal messages in them, something so eternal that time
cannot make them irrelevant, no passage of time can make them irrelevant.
The truth of a parable is timeless. The truth of history is the truth about particular
events in the present or the past. Once past, there is no way to prove beyond all doubt
that they actually happened; all that can be established is only a probability. The only
truth which we can trust is the truth which is in the present tense. Only the truth of a
parable, because it is beyond all time, can speak to us forever in the present tense. A
parable remains always in the present tense; it is never past. A parable is always
present; if you are ready to understand it, it is ready to deliver all its treasure to yoU.
And it does not depend on the arbitrary conditions of history.
Parable and history may coincide: a story which is historically true may also present
us with the truth of parable. The Jesus or the Buddha story may be historically
accurate, but even if it is, it is by the truth of the parable not by the truth of history
that we are healed. It does not matter whether Jesus existed or not, whether Buddha
was ever born on the earth or not; that doesn't matter.Just the parable, the possibility
that a Buddha is possible is enough to stir our hearts in a new longing, is enough to
make us feel thirsty for the divine. It is enough -- the very possibility of the parable is
enough -- to make us look upwards towards heaven, to send us into an exploration, to
make us discontented with the limitations that we have created around ourselves. It
provokes us into adventure.
A man is drowning. A rope comes spinning down; he clutches it and he is saved. Who
wove the rope? This parable... some say Buddha, some say Jesus, some say
Mohammed, but to the drowning man the important question is: 'Will it bear my
weight or not?' Who wove the rope is a question about history. You may get it all
wrong and still be saved. That is the beauty of a parable. Buddha may not have ever
existed, but if you understand the parable you will be saved.
What is a parable?
For example, Buddha is going to participate in a youth festival in his beautiful golden
chariot. Suddenly he sees an old man for the first time in his life, because this is the
parable: that when Buddha was born great astrologers came to his father to depict the
future, to predict the potential of the child. All the astrologers said, 'Either he will
become a world ruler, a CHAKRAVARTIN who will rule all the six continents, or he
will become a sannyasin who will renounce the whole world. These are the two
possibilities.'
All the astrologers except one raised two fingers to the king and said, 'One possibility:
he will become the greatest ruler in the world, never known before, never heard of
before, such will be his power. And the second possibility: that he may renounce the
whole thing completely and move into a forest, become a sannyasin and meditate, and
attain to Buddhahood.' Out of all the astrologers there was one astrologer, the
youngest, who raised only one finger. The king said, 'All have raised two fingers, and
you are raising one?'
He said, 'Because he is going to become a Buddha, there is no other possibility.'
But he was the youngest astrologer and the king was not puzzled by him and not
worried. How much can he know? And the old people were all saying, 'Two are the
possibilities,' so he asked the old people, 'What should I do so he never renounces the
kingdom?'
And they suggested, 'Make beautiful palaces for him, separate palaces for separate
seasons.' In India there are four seasons, so -- four palaces with beautiful gardens,
acres and acres of flowers. 'Make it almost like a paradise. And make it a point that no
old man ever enters into his gardens, that no ill person ever comes across him, that he
never sees a sannyasin, the ochre-robed, that he never comes across the phenomenon
of death. These four things are prohibited. Even if leaves are falling they should be
removed before he sees the old dying leaf. Flowers should be removed from his
garden before he becomes aware that flowers fade and die. And he should be
surrounded by beautiful women, the most beautiful women of the kingdom. And he
should be kept continuously entertained. Remember, then only can he be saved from
the desire of enlightenment. Keep him continuously entertained, exhausted, tired. In
the morning when he gets up he should see beautiful women dancing around him to
the very last moment when he falls asleep. He should fall asleep to music and dance.'
And this is how it was managed.
Now whether it is history or not is not the point. This is how we are all managing in
some way or other. This is a parable. This is how all parents are afraid -- maybe not so
much as Buddha's father because that is the extreme point. To make the parable
absolutely clear it has to be stretched to its logical end, that's all. But all fathers, all
mothers are afraid: you should not become a drop-out, you should not renounce.
Now one woman from America has written to Morarji Desai that her daughter is
caught by an Indian Master, hypnotized. 'Save my daughter, send her back to me.' The
papers have not said who this man is who has hypnotized her, the possibility is that it
must be me. And the daughter must be here. Where else?
Now parents are forming associations, societies, groups, to protect their children from
getting into any Eastern trip. They are more afraid of meditation than drugs. In
America there now exists an organization of parents to kidnap their children if they
become meditators. And then those children have to be given to deprogrammers, to
psychoanalysts, to deprogramme them -- a kind of mindwash. This is illegal. And one
psychoanalyst has been sent to jail in California for deprogramming, because he was
too enthusiastic. At first parents were giving him the authority to kidnap their children,
then he started on his own. Not even a parent has the authority to kidnap the child -once the child is of age no parent has the authority. But maybe they can manage it.
They have lobbies in the parliament. They can manage it, because the judge is also a
parent, a father, and the police and the lawyers -- all are parents; they can manage,
they can enforce it.
But the psychoanalyst became a missionary on his own; he started kidnapping. He had
an organization of kidnappers and he started mindwashing programmes -- he called
them 'de-programming' -- so that a person becomes anti-meditation, anti-East, and
falls back into the old fold. If he is a Catholic, then he becomes a Catholic and goes to
the church; if he is a Protestant, then he becomes a Protestant and reads the Bible.
These people are afraid -- not only now, they have always been afraid. Buddha's story
is just a logical extreme. Parents are afraid their children may renounce the world, that
is the eternal truth in it.
But the parable goes on. Whenever Buddha moved to the capital the roads were
cleaned, all old people were removed, sannyasins were barred. When his chariot
would pass he never came across anything ugly, ill, old, dead.
But that day something happened. The parable says that the gods in heaven became
very worried, 'Is Buddha going to remain in this stupid kind of continuous
entertainment? Will he never become enlightened?' Roads were cleaned, traffic was
managed and controlled, but those gods managed, too. One god appeared as an old
man, another god appeared as a sannyasin, another as a very ill, coughing,
almost-dying person, another as a dead man being carried by other people to the
cemetery .
The parable is beautiful -- the gods became worried. It has a significant message. This
existence wants you to become enlightened, that is the meaning of it. Existence
becomes worried, existence cares, existence wants you to become free of all bondage,
free of all darkness. Existence wants to help you, and when it sees that you are going
and going and going and wasting your life, it creates situations in which you can be
provoked; that is the meaning of the parable. There are no gods in heaven and no gods
will come and walk like old men, but the parable is a way of saying certain hidden
truths. The hidden truth is that the existence cares for you, that you have been sent
into this existence to learn something.
Don't get lost.
Now this is an eternal message. It doesn't matter whether Buddha was born or not,
whether he is a historical person or not, all that matters is that existence cares for you.
If it cared for Buddha, it cares for you too. It will create occasions for you and if you
are a little bit alert you will be able to catch hold of those occasions and those
occasions will prove a transforming situation, an awakening.
Buddha saw the old man and asked his charioteer, 'What has happened to this man?' -naturally, because he had never seen an old man. You would not have asked because
you see it every day. It was so strange. He was married, he had a son, and he had
never seen an old man. Suddenly he was shocked at seeing the old man. And the
charioteer was going to lie, because he knew Buddha's father.
But, the story says, one god entered into the charioteer's body and told the truth. He
said, 'Everybody has to become old.'
And Buddha asked, 'Am I also going to become old? And my beloved, my wife,
Yashodhara too? And my little child, Rahul, who was just born a few days ago, he
too?'
And the god, through the charioteer, said -- forced the charioteer to say, 'Yes,
everybody is going to become old.' And then the dead man was seen. 'And what has
happened to him?' Buddha asked.
And the god, through the charioteer, said, 'Everybody has to come to this state. Illness,
old age, then death.'
'Am I also going to die? And what about my beautiful woman, Yashodhara, and my
child, Rahul, who was born just a few days ago?'
And the god said, 'All are going to die without any exception.' And then Buddha saw
the ochre-robed sannyasin. And he said, 'Why is he wearing ochre, orange?' And the
god said, 'This man has also seen illness, old age and death happening. Now he is
trying to find the source of immortality. He has become aware that this life is
contaminated with death. He has seen the fact that this body is going to disappear
sooner or later, dust unto dust. So he is trying to seek and search for something which
is undying. He has become a meditator. He has renounced entertainment. He is in
search of enlightenment.'
And Buddha said, 'Then wait. There is no need to go to the youth festival anymore,
because if youth is just a momentary phenomenon, I am already old. And if life is
going to disappear into dust, I have died.'
See the insight of the parable: Buddha says, 'If it is going to happen, what does it
matter whether it is going to happen tomorrow or after seven years or seventy years?
If it is going to happen, it has already happened. Turn back! I am no longer interested
in any festival. All festivals are finished for me. I have to seek what you call
enlightenment before this body disappears. I have to use this body as a stepping-stone
towards something that is undying. I have to search for nectar.'
And he turned back. The same night he left his palace and escaped into the deep forest
to meditate.
Now this is a parable. Whether it happened or not I am not concerned about at all.
How does it matter whether it coincides with history or not?
That's why many times people who are too obsessed with history become angry with
me -- because I have no commitment to history at all. I take all poetic freedom. My
commitment is to parables, not to history. If I see that the parable can become more
beautiful, then I play with the parable. I don't bother whether it is written so or not.
Who cares? My whole commitment is to the poetry and the parable and the hidden
message in it. And whether it happened or not, it can save you still.
'Who made the rope -- Jesus, Buddha, Mohammed?' What is the point when you are
drowning in a well? The whole point is whether this rope is going to bear your weight
or not. Try it. And you may get it all wrong and still be saved. The rope may have
been made by Buddha and you may think it has been made by Jesus -- it doesn't
matter, you can still be saved. The Bible may have been written by a ghost writer -- it
doesn't matter; it has the message. And whosoever the writer was must have been
enlightened, otherwise he could not have written such a beautiful parable. He WAS
Jesus. Whosoever has created the story of Buddha WAS Buddha. Whether the story
existed or not doesn't matter.
Hence I use so many parables. The parable embodies the hope, the danger, and the
possibility held out by Lao Tzu or Zarathustra. If all the Bibles were destroyed, if the
name of Jesus were forgotten, it would not matter anymore, so long as the fire kindled
the hope, the beauty, and the possibility still went on burning. If it is proved,
absolutely proved, that Buddha never happened, Jesus was never born, Mohammed
never walked on the earth, Mahavira was a myth and Lao Tzu an invention of some
fictitious writers, if the hope continues and if man continues to hope to surpass
himself, if the fire continues to burn, if the longing remains to seek and search for the
truth, that's enough. You can forget all about the Bibles and the Korans. If the longing
continues, the Koran is going to be born in you. If the longing is intense enough, one
day you will see Buddha arising out of you, you will see Jesus being born in you.
The last question:
Question 3
YOU SAY THAT ONE HAS TO PAY FOR EVERYTHING IN LIFE. ISN'T THERE
ANY EXCEPTION?
Listen to this anecdote.
An American in Paris asked a cabby to give him the address of a good brothel. He
went there alone, selected his partner, and ordered dinner. Later that evening, after
satisfying his every whim, the thoroughly-drained gentleman went downstairs and
asked the Madame for his bill.
'There is no charge, Monsieur,' said the lady of the house. Astonished, but not
disposed to argue the matter, the gentleman departed. The next night he returned to
the brothel and repeated his performance of the previous night. Upon leaving this time
however, he was shocked to learn that his bill was eight hundred francs.
'Impossible!' the American shrieked. 'I was here last evening and I got everything and
you didn't charge me a sou.'
'Ah,' said the Madame, 'but last night you were on television.'
Yes, sometimes you may get something free, but be aware -- you may be on
television.
In fact, there is nothing in life that you can get without paying for it -- and you only
get as much as you are ready to pay for. When you are ready to pay with your life,
you get eternal life in return.
Nothing is free, nothing can be free.